The Rage of Dragons (The Burning Books #1) (34 page)

The Crags lost their quiet and the bloodthirsty calls of women and men echoed across the mountainside. Tau imagined how confused the sequestered scales would be, hearing the tumult. He centered himself. It was time to work.

Mayumbu, bigger, holding a longer sword, came in range first and sent a thundering blow for Tau’s neck. His sword, moving faster than an untrained eye could track, ripped through the air, keening as it went. Tau swept beneath it, came up, and smashed the hilt of his strong-side sword into Mayumbu’s wrist, snapping it. Using both their momentum, he thrust the dulled point of his other blade into the leather armor covering Mayumbu’s guts. Tau’s aim was true and he hit the gap between two protective bronze plates, piercing the expensive animal hide, the undershirt beneath, and Mayumbu’s stomach.

Mayumbu was a massive man. Tau braced. The collision pushed him back a stride and, though less time had passed than it took to draw breath, the men were entangled.

Mayumbu, standing over Tau, grabbed him by the neck and crashed his sword arm across Tau’s back. Tau was looking into his face. He wanted to see the moment when Mayumbu realized it was over.

It wasn’t until Mayumbu’s broken wrist and empty fingers slapped across Tau’s shoulder blades. It wasn’t until he tried to draw a breath and the pain hit, from two handspans’ worth of bronze buried in his core, that Mayumbu realized he was undone. He screamed then, the pain catching up with the moment and taking him somewhere else.

Tau ripped the Noble’s weakened grip away from his neck and stepped back. His blade came with him, sliding out of Mayumbu with the sound of a stick pulled too quick from mud. Mayumbu fell to his knees, gasping and gawping.

He was scared. Tau could see it in his eyes and, though it was not mercy, Tau took away the fear. He flew his sword’s dulled edge into Mayumbu’s head, smashing a dent in the man’s helmet over his temple and felling him, sending him to the grass in a heap.

Tau remained over the body, glaring at the rest of the Indlovu, daring them to do anything other than what they’d promised. The Crags had gone quiet again, even the few wispy clouds in the sky holding their place.

“Goddess’s mercy,” said the first Indlovu, going to one knee.

“Goddess’s mercy,” said the next and the next and the next, their calls for mercy flowing fast, like water from the bathtub tap in the umqondisi quarter.

“The skirmish is won by Scale Jayyed,” came the voice of the wiry citadel officiant. He sounded shaken. “Scale Jayyed advances to the semifinals.”

The tap opened further and the crowd became part of its flow, drowning the plateau in the deluge of their shouts, cheers, triumph, and loss.

Scale Jayyed rushed to Tau’s side and they surrounded him, celebrating him and their victory, but he neither heard nor felt them. He was looking down at Mayumbu’s blood as it ran through the grass and into the dirt. It was dark, arterial, and nothing about it looked noble at all.

Tau had never seen men so exuberant without masmas or gaum. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn the Goddess had turned their cups of water to olu. They were in the scale’s tent and men were dancing, hooting. Azima had his drums, which he took everywhere, between his legs and he beat them ferociously, if not rhythmically. Anan was soaked; the men of the scale had doused him with water from the drinking pails.

“Semifinals!” crowed Yaw, pulling Tau around in a tight circle as if they were dancers at a Harvest festival. “Semifinals!” he said, spinning off to find a new partner.

Uduak caught Tau’s eye, raised his water cup, and drank from it. Tau returned the gesture.

“You shouldn’t have agreed, Tau!” said Hadith, weaving through the men as if he were drunk. “The plan only let you dispatch one man. You’ve fallen from the list of greats slated to become Ingonyama.”

“There’s tomorrow,” Tau said.

“That there is!” said Hadith. “To tomorrow!” he shouted, thrusting his cup of water high in the air and spilling its contents over Tau and several others.

“To tomorrow!” came the voices of close to sixty sword brothers as the tent flaps were whisked aside and Jayyed strode in, his appearance hushing the men.

“We have a match,” Jayyed told them. “In the semifinals, we fight on the urban battleground. Our opponents lost no men today, and tomorrow we face them at dusk. Tomorrow, we fight Scale Osa.”

The men murmured, unsure how to react. Tau’s eyes were bright. “Kellan.”

Everything had gone wrong. Uduak and his men had fallen, Yaw’s unit hadn’t been seen for half a span, and Tau was trapped in a crumbling building, surrounded by twenty-seven Indlovu.

The skirmish had started slow. Both sides had been cautious, taking ground in the cluttered urban battleground with care. To goad Scale Osa and fulfill his promise to Tau, Hadith gave Tau three men to use as a roving group of assassins.

Tau, with Runako and the twins, Kuende and Mshinde, had been like a reaper at harvest. Whenever the Indlovu were otherwise engaged, separated, or distracted, Tau and his half team found and dispatched them. It had worked well, until Kellan adjusted. After losing too many, he kept his men together.

In spite of this, Hadith wanted Scale Jayyed divided into the Chosen’s standard three units. He felt its flexibility gave them more options than Kellan’s unified scale. Perhaps that would have been the case, if Uduak’s unit had not gotten cut off. Or if Yaw’s unit had not been blocked by buildings, unable to join the fight.

At the time, Kellan had thirty-one Indlovu to Uduak’s nine Ihashe. Tau demanded they go in. Hadith refused. Without Yaw’s unit, they wouldn’t do much good and would only join in Uduak’s fate. Tau knew Hadith was right, but being right didn’t help.

As they held back, Hadith stared wild-eyed at the fighting, at Uduak, who was last to fall. The big man did not claim the Goddess’s mercy. The Indlovu beat him unconscious before he could. Then they continued to beat him.

The nearest officiant was a citadel umqondisi. It was his duty to call incapacitated men out of bounds. When Uduak went down, he turned his back, letting the Nobles do as they would.

Hadith, mind lost, ran in, shouting Uduak’s name. That forced Tau and the rest of the unit into combat. It was nine Lessers against three times their number in Nobles. It was not winnable.

Runako, Kuende, and Mshinde were lost, and Tau called a ragged retreat. They ran and Tau had to drag Hadith away with them. The Indlovu gave chase, but the six Lessers evaded their pursuers, taking cover in a set of buildings.

As they scurried through the empty replicas, desperate to stay hidden from the hunting Indlovu, Themba cursed Hadith’s hysteria. Tau grabbed Themba by the front of his gambeson and told him that by engaging the Indlovu, they had saved Uduak’s life.

Hadith’s attack had pulled the Indlovu away from the big man, and with the fighting moved on, the umqondisi officiant had been forced to declare Uduak and the other dispatched men in his unit out of bounds. Uduak had been carried off the battleground. Tau couldn’t be sure, but he believed Uduak was alive. He had to believe it.

Themba quieted, saying nothing, and the six men heard combat. It was Yaw’s unit. The fighting did not last long. That worried Tau.

Moments later, Chinedu pointed out the skulking forms of armored Indlovu circling the adobe longhouses in which they hid. The Indlovu walked single file, ducking beneath the building’s windows, trying not to be seen. Tau saw them go past, their row of hunched backs reminding him of the stories his mother had told him when he was a child, the ones about the serpentine sea monsters said to hunt the open waters of the Roar.

Tau didn’t believe the stories about enormous sea serpents, but monsters did exist. Twenty-seven of them were closing in on him and the five men beside him. Maybe four men. He wasn’t sure he could count on Hadith if it came to more fighting. Their inkokeli hadn’t been himself after seeing the Indlovu try to kill Uduak.

Tau let his fingers play over the hilts of his two bronze practice swords. There was no hope left. He had to admit it.

He’d come so far, done so much, and he’d not faced Kellan. Scale Osa’s inkokeli was well protected and Tau had not been able to get to him. It burned, especially when he’d watched the murderous Greater Noble preside over Uduak’s beating. Kellan had stood there, apart from the others, disdain on his face, as if he were too good to dirty his hands.

When Hadith lost control, Tau had been glad to go in. They went to save Uduak. That’s what Tau had told Themba, but saving Uduak was Hadith’s reason. Tau, shamed by the thought, couldn’t be sure it was his. He’d gone to meet Kellan.

But the Indlovu had closed ranks. They’d blocked his way and Kellan had called for more men. Striving to reach Okar, Tau took his skirmish body count from five men dispatched to six, then seven, eight, and nine.

He’d terrorized the Indlovu until Kellan’s actions stopped him again. The Scale Osa inkokeli yelled for the men standing against Tau to fight him together, to encircle him. Tau could not get through and the Indlovu almost had him. The only reason Tau was still in the skirmish was Chinedu.

Once they saw Uduak carried from the battleground, Chinedu and the rest of the unit ran to Tau’s aid. With them beside him, Tau managed to escape, dragging Hadith along. They’d gone into the fight with nine men, come out with six, and, given the odds, they had to consider themselves blessed.

Still, none of it mattered. They’d trapped themselves in the crumbling buildings. The Indlovu couldn’t be sure exactly where they were, but they were searching and the noose was tightening.

“It’s over!” Kellan called from outside the buildings. “You’re surrounded, outnumbered, finished. Come, take the Goddess’s mercy, and put an end to this, with honor.”

Themba nudged Hadith. “Say something, damn your eyes.”

Hadith looked grim, distant, but he pushed hope into his voice and yelled out. “You want to do this honorably?”

Kellan laughed. “I will neither hear nor take offers from you, Inkokeli Buhari. The day is ours. You can take the painless path I’ve offered, or we come in there and…”

“You want to storm the buildings?” Hadith said. “Please do. We have sixteen men to your twenty-seven. We’ll make a battle of it and end your chances to take the finals.”

“Does the Common of Kerem count as ten men now?” replied Kellan. “There’s six of you.”

“You think so? Come and count.”

There was no response.

Tau, hands shaking, growled to Hadith. “The longer we wait—”

Hadith shook his head, coming back to himself a little. “He thinks he’s won, but he needs to finish us and keep enough of his men for tomorrow’s finals. Our chance lies in the gap between where Kellan is now and where he needs to be.”

Themba stared at Hadith like he’d begun eating dirt. “Chance? We’re six Ihashe against twenty-seven Indlovu—”

“If we wait for Yaw—” Hadith said.

Themba sucked his teeth. “Hadith, come now! We heard the battle. Yaw and his men are gone.”

“The battle was too short,” Hadith countered. “Kellan didn’t have time to get them all. I think Yaw ran, like we did.”

“You think?” Tau looked away in frustration and saw them. The dark corner of the building held three kneeling demons, their yellow eyes locked on him, their sharp teeth shining in the gloom.

“Tau?” asked Chinedu.

Tau shook his head, blinking them away. “I’m fine but won’t be for much longer. None of us will, if we stay here and let Kellan overrun us.”

“He won’t do it,” said Hadith. “These buildings are bunched together and sound ricochets between them. He doesn’t know which one we’re in. He’ll have to split his men to make sure we don’t escape. If his men are split, he risks losing too many. That’s why he’s talking. He’s looking for a better fight than this. If Yaw is out there and we wait, we can strike together.”

“This is your plan?” Tau said.

“You have a better one?”

“Common of Kerem!” Kellan called. “Tau Solarin, I’m weary. Come out, if the rest of them won’t. Come out and let us end what we started in Citadel City. My men won’t interfere.”

Tau’s swords were in his hands and he was standing.

Hadith grabbed his wrist and yanked it. “Sit down, fool!”

“I’m waiting, Tau,” shouted Kellan. “Will you stay in there, hiding from me? After all you’ve done, all you’ve accomplished, are you still that boy? The coward whose father had to fight for him? I expected more from you, given your father’s bravery. Given the man your father… was.”

Tau pulled away from Hadith’s grasp.

“Tau!” Hadith said. “You’ll lead them to us!”

Tau’s hand was on the door. “He helped murder my father,” he said, pulling it open and walking out.

Kellan Okar watched the Common of Kerem, as he was being called, walk out of the southernmost of the four buildings he’d ordered his men to surround. The Common was as Kellan remembered, dark as night, well proportioned, small. His face was scarred and otherwise unremarkable, except for his eyes. They were brown, which was typical, but they burned, which was not.

Kellan signaled his men to attack. The Lesser had no leather or armor. Instead, he wore slate-gray trousers, marking him as an Ihashe warrior, and a filthy patchwork gambeson. He held a sword in each hand and readied them, thinking Kellan’s Indlovu were coming for him. They were not, and they did as Kellan had instructed. They passed Tau by, streaming into the open door from which he’d emerged.

The last man to pass Tau was the Noble who claimed to know him. Jabari Onai was his name. He had spirit, but like most Petty Nobles, he was limited by his natural talent, and Jabari had fallen on day one of the melee. Kellan had given him a spot in today’s skirmish, in place of much better men, because of Onai’s connection to the Common. Hadith Buhari, Kellan thought, was not the only inkokeli who could play mind games.

The Common watched the Indlovu running into the buildings, no doubt considering that he’d not only confirmed the location of Scale Jayyed’s men but also abandoned his sword brothers. Then he saw Jabari Onai and his face changed.

Kellan had been right to include the Petty Noble. Tau was shaken by his presence.

“I’m here, Tau Solarin,” Kellan said, pulling the Common’s attention back to him, “and this time your father won’t save you.”

When Kellan first heard the stories about the superhuman Ihashe warrior, he didn’t connect them to the man he’d fought in Citadel City. That came later, when he learned the Lesser fought with two swords. Even then, Kellan ignored the tales. He had too much to do to spend time thinking about one unusually talented Ihashe.

Then, days before the melee, his newly appointed Gifted, a powerful initiate named Zuri, ordered him to the Gifted Citadel. It was their first official meeting, but he’d recognized her at once. She was the same Gifted who had enervated him when he’d fought the strange Common.

Already nervous about the meeting, he pushed the incident out of mind and walked over to greet her. He didn’t get three steps before she accused him of murder.

She told him she’d have nothing to do with him and that if he did become an Ingonyama, she would reject her duty as his Gifted, jeopardizing his status. She would not enrage and empower a man like him.

Kellan had been lost. He’d murdered no one and she was threatening everything he’d worked for. He tried to calm her, begging her to justify her accusations. When she did, the episode with the crazy Common began to make sense. Kellan had explained himself, soothed the Gifted initiate, and considered the matter closed. However, the Goddess did not seem to see it the same.

The night after the Common dueled and beat Mayumbu, Kellan’s patron, Guardian Councillor Abasi Odili, came to him. The councillor explained that Scale Osa would skirmish Scale Jayyed. He wanted Kellan to take care of the Lesser who fought with two swords.

Odili, Kellan realized, didn’t know that Tau Solarin was the son of the man he’d ordered Dejen to kill earlier that same cycle. This was not personal. The Royal Nobles had simply had enough of Scale Jayyed and their unprecedented run. Odili wanted the scale obliterated and Tau dead.

Kellan wanted to refuse. He didn’t, though. He couldn’t lose the councillor’s patronage. Not yet.

It would have been different if his father hadn’t been branded a traitor and hanged. It would have been different if losing the man she loved hadn’t broken his mother, or if his sister were old enough to run the family’s estates, or, after having seen all the tragedy befalling them, if Kellan’s uncle had come to his kin’s aid. It’d be different if wishes were worldly, but they weren’t, and Kellan could look to no one other than himself to save his family.

He still needed Odili, and the man’s money and influence, because he had to become an Ingonyama. It was the only way he’d ever get out from under Odili’s thumb, his own family’s debts, his uncle’s disdain, and the shame of his father’s cowardice.

Becoming an Ingonyama was everything and the only thing Kellan wanted, before seeing Queen Tsiora at the Guardian Ceremony. He’d seen her before, when they were both young and she was a girl, but she couldn’t be called that anymore. Since receiving his guardian dagger from her, he’d thought about the queen more than any man should think about anything. It seemed destiny that the greatest service he could offer his people would also be his greatest joy.

Kellan’s uncle could never be Queen Tsiora’s true champion, and she would soon have to select another. It meant Kellan had a chance. His name was already spoken in the same breaths as many of the Omehi’s legendary warriors, and he’d heard it was whispered in Palm that he was a possibility. It scared him to think it and yet he could hardly think about anything else. He longed to see Tsiora Omehia in more than just his dreams.

Everything Kellan desired was in reach, but a single stride in the wrong direction could burn his hopes to ash. So he told Odili he’d do it and, for the second time, harm a member of the Solarin family.

Kellan exhaled and even his breath seemed to boil in the heat. He pulled his sword from its scabbard and, ready to commit violence, still had time to wish things could be different. He’d played a part in the death of the Common’s father, and there was no hiding from that or from the cruel work he was about to do.

Yet, he wanted to tell Tau he was sorry and that it wasn’t fair. He couldn’t, though, just like he couldn’t have turned down Odili. There was so much more at stake than one Lesser’s loss.

He called out across the space separating him from the Common of Kerem, taunting Tau with the things he’d learned from the Gifted initiate. “This day was fated,” he said, loud enough for those in the stands bordering the urban battlefield to hear. He’d give Odili his show. “Twice we’ve met. The first time, your father gave his life for yours. The second, a Gifted wanted you spared. Today, it’s the two of us, and I’ve spent my life training to kill men like you.”

The world had gone silent, making it easy to hear the strange thing the Common said before he attacked. “You’re wrong, Okar,” he said. “There are no men like me.”

Their blades met in a crash of bronze, and Kellan, much larger, weighing nearly twice what the Common did, planned to use his size, strength, and speed to overcome the smaller man. He’d make a play of it for the watching Nobles, embarrassing the Lesser. Then, after a time, he’d fake a killing blow that would, with the Goddess’s blessing, do no more than crack the boy’s skull.

It was cruel, but it was the best he could do, since Abasi Odili wanted the Common dead. After, Kellan would tell his patron that he thought he’d struck Tau hard enough to kill. He’d blame his dulled weapon for the error.

He slipped his sword away from the one held in Tau’s right, no doubt the Common’s better sword hand, and thrust his shield to blind him. As he did, he swung his own blade, planning to catch Tau in the arm or side. He didn’t get the chance.

The sword in the Common’s left hand moved faster than Kellan thought possible, hitting him on his helmet, snapping his head sideways and sending him stumbling with half the muscles in his neck wrenched out of place.

Head ringing and neck on fire, Kellan righted himself, only to be hit again. He raised his shield for cover and was struck below it. He whipped his sword at Tau’s last position, slicing through empty air before taking a bone-numbing blow to the leg that ripped through the leather and cut him.

He reeled and limped back, swinging wildly. The Common, out of reach and eyes blazing, stalked him.

Kellan’s heart hammered and his breathing was unsteady. He attacked anyway, but his swing was parried. He swung again and was blocked, repelled. He heaved himself back, desperate to make space, and heard the rumble of running feet.

He looked to the noise’s source and his heart sank. It was the unit of Lessers, the ones he’d not been able to finish. They’d come to finish him.

There were eight, maybe nine of them. Too many for him to take alone. But the Common pointed them to the buildings. Kellan didn’t dare hope they’d obey and almost wept when they did, running inside to help their sword brothers.

It made no sense, he thought. He’d sent twenty-seven Indlovu into those buildings. The Lessers had no chance against them all.

He grinned. This was it, then. All of Scale Jayyed were together, facing his men. The Lessers would be wiped out. That meant there was only one thing left to be handled. It was on him to eliminate the Common of Kerem.

“Blood will show!” he screamed, delivering a thrust for Tau’s chest. The Lesser dodged and Kellan corrected, his blade blasting back the other way, hitting nothing. He rebalanced, spinning low, shield out like a weapon to break Tau’s shins. It didn’t connect, so he adjusted, ready to strike, and was clubbed to the ground by the flats of two swords.

He gasped. The pain was excruciating and, for a breath, he thought his back broken. It wasn’t, but as the feeling in his body flooded back, it felt like someone had whipped hot coals into his skin. He tried to draw breath, but the fires webbing their way through his sides denied him a proper attempt.

“Get up, Nkosi Kellan,” the Common said, his voice a rasp. “I’m not finished with you yet.”

Kellan spat, tasting blood, and forced himself to his feet. He was hurt, feigned it was worse by wobbling, then flew at Tau. His desire to leave the Lesser unharmed forgotten, he let his sword soar straight for the throat. The Lesser sidestepped as if he’d seen the same sort of attack a thousand times, and Kellan careened past, crumpling, then collapsing beneath the pain and blow to his shoulder from the Common’s sword hilt.

“Get up, nkosi,” the Common said. “A man should die on his feet.”

It was then Kellan realized the Common was toying with him. It was then he felt fear, clamping onto his neck like stone hands, filling his bladder, and making his legs weak. The Common wanted his life. The Common… Kellan tensed every muscle, coiling them, making them ready. He was not Odili’s lackey and not a coward like his father. He was Kellan Okar, the best the Indlovu Citadel had ever produced, and fated to be queen’s champion. His life would not come cheap.

He surged up, blade first, screaming obscenities, and the Common turned his attack, striking him on the upper arm. Kellan almost dropped his sword in agony, was attacked again, and, blundering away, he threw a desperate parry. It wasn’t enough, and he felt armor rip and skin tear as he took a cut to the rib cage that made every movement a misery.

The Common lunged. Kellan swept to intercept with his shield, missed, and took Tau’s blade between two of his armor plates, allowing a fingerspan of bronze to enter the muscle on his chest. He fell back, crying out, and wasn’t given time enough to blink before the bastard shot his other sword out and low, burying a handspan of bronze in the meat of his left hip. The Lesser’s blade pierced his side and ripped free, taking a flap of flesh and leather with it.

Kellan screamed and fell, the wash of sticky wet along his belt line telling him the wound would scar for life.

“Get up, Kellan Okar,” the impossibility standing over him said. “Time to die.”