The Rage of Dragons (The Burning Books #1) (38 page)

Tau screamed at the hedena who had speared Jayyed, unable to believe the warrior woman had run. The Xiddeen in front of him seemed surprised too, and for a moment the fighting stopped. Tau didn’t notice. He was numb. It had happened again. Someone he cared for had been hurt, and in spite of everything he’d done, nothing had changed. He’d been unable to stop it.

A Xiddeen warrior, the first to start fighting again, stabbed at him. Tau killed the man and took a step forward. Another Xiddian, fighting an Indlovu, was pushed too close. Tau ran him through and took another step. He could do it. He could chase the warrior woman down. He could—

“Common of Kerem, no!” ordered Kellan Okar from behind him.

“Don’t call me that,” Tau said, struggling to control himself.

“You will throw your life away. Go to your umqondisi. He’s dying and we can’t hold.”

“Jayyed…”

“He’s still alive. Will you let him leave this world alone?”

Tau glared at Kellan but left the front lines, running to where he’d seen Jayyed fall. He found him, face ashen and eyes half-closed. Tau went to his knees and took his hand. “Jayyed.”

“Tau?”

“It’s me.”

“I thought… I thought it was possible. Peace.”

Tau was back to the day his father died. “Fight, Umqondisi. Keep fighting. We’ll get you to the Crags and a Sah priest will make this right.”

“Take it… Ta…” Jayyed shoved something into Tau’s hand. It was his guardian dagger.

“No, you’ll want it when you’re better,” Tau told him.

“Get the scale… out.” Jayyed pressed Tau’s fingers closed around the rare weapon.

“Simple plan, like I’ve always liked. We’re leaving, all of us.”

Jayyed wasn’t listening, and his eyes slid past Tau. Tau hadn’t heard anyone approach, but Jayyed’s gaze was so certain that Tau checked.

The collapsing front lines of the battle had pushed closer, but there was no one over Tau’s shoulder. He looked back. Jayyed’s eyes were focused, clear.

“Jamilah?” Jayyed asked. “You’re already here?” He struggled, desperate to breathe and unable to take in air but wanting to say more. “Jamilah,” he said. His daughter’s name. His last word. Jayyed died there, in the dirt.

Tau heard heavy footfalls. He swung round and saw Kellan. The Greater Noble was no longer enraged and Zuri was with him. The battle had taken a unique toll on her. She looked bone weary and ill. Yet, she was caring enough, loving enough, to share his hurt.

She went to Tau and held him. She hadn’t known Jayyed but could see what he meant to Tau. Her pity swept away the last of Tau’s self-control and tears blurred his sight.

“He’s dead,” he told her, voice flat.

“Our battle lines have collapsed,” Kellan told him. “We go now or never.”

Zuri let go of her hug and Tau tucked Jayyed’s guardian dagger into his belt before slipping a hand beneath the sword master’s body.

“He can’t come,” said Kellan.

“I’m not leaving him with them,” Tau said, waving his free arm in the direction of the hedeni.

“Tau, we’ll have to run,” Kellan said. “More of us are going to die before this is over. You carry his body and you risk yourself, as well as those of us who won’t leave you behind.” Kellan glanced at Zuri as he said the last part.

Tau wiped at his face, clearing tears. He stood. “Where’s my scale?”

“Fighting to clear a path out of this for us,” Kellan said. “If they can manage it, it will not stay clear for long.”

Tau nodded, closed his eyes, and sent a prayer to the Goddess. He took Zuri’s hand. Kellan looked like he wanted to say something about that but must have changed his mind. Instead, the Greater Noble bellowed to the Indlovu still fighting, ordering a retreat. The Indlovu, disciplined even in defeat, broke away from the disintegrating front lines, fleeing before the Xiddeen.

They ran, abandoning the mountaintop gully, past Inkokeli Oluchi, who had died surrounded by the bodies of a dozen of his men. They ran from the place where Jayyed Ayim and close to two wings of Chosen had breathed their last, and they did not slow until they were a thousand strides away.

They caught up to the remaining men of Scale Jayyed, Scale Osa, and what was left of Scale Otieno, the third scale that had made up Oluchi’s wing. To Tau’s relief, he spotted Hadith, Yaw, and Uduak. Yaw’s shield arm was wrapped from wrist to shoulder with filthy cloth crusted with blood, but other than that, his friends had been fortunate.

“Tau!” Uduak said, coming over.

“Chinedu and Jayyed—” Tau said, his throat closing as he spoke their names.

Uduak stepped back, coming no closer. Yaw turned away, shutting his eyes, and Themba, near enough to hear Tau, was speechless.

Hadith came forward, speaking more to the ground than to those around him. “Anan too. He saved me.”

Themba spoke then. “Runako and Mavuto are gone.”

Mshindi, the twin, stepped forward. “Kuende is dead. I cut down the mka who slew him, but my brother is dead.”

“You avenged him,” Yaw said.

“I should have saved him. He’s back there now, lying in the muck, my brother. I’ve never been away from him. We came into this world together.” Mshindi turned away, speaking the last to himself. “Always thought we’d leave it that way too.”

“They’re coming,” Kellan said, indicating the way behind them. He had his hand on the hilt of his sword.

Tau looked. The night was dark, but the path behind them was long and level, and he’d been born with sharp eyes. He could see them.

The Xiddeen had reorganized themselves. They were marching. At the front of their column was a group of lizard riders.

Hadith pressed his forehead to Mshindi’s, speaking to the bereaved brother. That done, he turned to the group. “We have to stay ahead of them.”

Kellan was standing nearby. “Yes, if anyone is still in the Crags, we need to warn them, and if not, we need to warn Citadel City. They have to know that our defense of the Fist failed.”

Hadith raised his voice, speaking to the remnants of two wings. “Help the wounded, no one gets left behind, but know that we cannot slow our pace. Citadel City may stand or fall on our speed.”

Kellan eyed Hadith, unsure how to deal with the Lesser’s presumption.

“Leave it,” said Zuri. Kellan grunted but left it, and the fighters, Ihashe and Indlovu, moved as fast as they could down the mountain.

“Tau,” Zuri said, “there will be no peace?”

“Peace?” Kellan and Hadith said together.

Tau addressed Kellan. “You’re the champion’s nephew.”

“And?” said Kellan.

Tau hesitated. It felt strange to give up the secret, but it was more strange to imagine it meant anything but ashes. “Before the melee, I followed Jayyed and Odili. They joined up with the queen’s champion, the KaEid, a few Gifted, and an Ingonyama. They climbed the Crags and met a party of Xiddeen in the Fist.”

“They did what?” said Kellan.

“You really want us to believe that you didn’t know your uncle was holding peace talks?” asked Tau.

Hadith almost choked on the words. “Peace talks?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Kellan. “Abshir is more queen’s champion than uncle. The man refused to come to my father’s funeral. He said he could not, in good conscience, attend a coward’s burning.”

Tau could hear the bitterness in Kellan’s voice.

“I wouldn’t know anything that I was not, as an Indlovu initiate, supposed to know,” Kellan said.

“What happened in the Crags?” Zuri asked.

“I only know what I overheard,” Tau said.

“Then, tell us that.”

“The hedeni came to the meeting with a captured Gifted, an Enrager. She’d been their prisoner for almost a full cycle. She was tortured. They made her teach them how to enrage.”

“Impossible,” Kellan said. “The races of man cannot learn each other’s gifts. Besides, the Goddess burned out the Xiddeen’s gifts when she cursed them.”

Tau’s voice was tight. “The hedena enraged, who killed Chinedu and Jayyed, would have a word with you on that.” Kellan had no reply, and Tau told them the rest. “At the meeting, the hedeni returned our Gifted. Their warlord’s son came too. The son is meant to manage our military’s surrender, as a beginning to peace. In turn, we gave them an Enervator. She will teach her gift. Then, to complete the terms for peace, the dragons must leave Xidda and Queen Tsiora must marry the warlord’s son.”

“No, she can’t!” Kellan spluttered. “Why would we accept this?”

“Jayyed doesn’t think… he didn’t think the war winnable and tried to prove it to the Guardian Council. For doing so, he was removed from their ranks and stripped of his role among them.”

“If they found his evidence so lacking, how did we come to peace talks?” Kellan asked.

“Your uncle sits on the council. He heard Jayyed speak. He must have told the queen.”

Kellan spoke slowly, placing emphasis on each word. “Your position is that secondhand words convinced our queen to sue for peace?”

“Jayyed spoke with her directly and it seemed to him that the queen already knew we were losing. But maybe his testimony to the council, along with whatever else she knows, pushed her toward peace.”

“As you say,” said Kellan, watching Tau from the side of his eyes.

“The talks I overheard were not the first ones. Queen Tsiora has had her champion, council chairman, and KaEid working to see if peace is possible. She found out it was, and, earlier tonight, Zuri told me that the queen planned to meet with the Guardian Council after the melee.” Tau looked at the faces of those around him. “I think that meeting’s goal is to inform the council that terms for peace have been accepted. If the queen knows that war with the Xiddeen ends in our destruction, she has to stop it.”

Themba interjected. “Stop the war? Surrender it, you mean.”

Themba’s words, so near the ones Tau had spoken to Jayyed, seemed naive when voiced as the tatters of their fighting force raced down a mountain in the heartland of their queendom, fleeing an army of invaders they could not stop.

“You think it was easy for Jayyed to argue for peace?” Tau asked. “He spent his whole life fighting the hedeni. He sacrificed so much, and in the end, the Nobles took more from him than the Xiddeen ever did. Odili and the KaEid used Jamilah to hurt him. They placed his only child in the hands of our enemy!” Tau’s voice had gotten louder. He didn’t hear Zuri when first she spoke.

“No,” she said. “Goddess, no.” Zuri had stopped moving.

“Lady Gifted, we cannot dally,” Kellan told her.

“We gave them Jamilah? Jamilah is Jayyed’s daughter?”

Something in the way she said it made the rest of them stop.

“She’s not just an Enervator,” Zuri said. “Jamilah is one of our most powerful. She’s an Entreater.”

“We really should keep moving,” Yaw said, looking back. The hedeni were lost to sight on the Crag’s twisting paths, but they would not be far behind.

“Jayyed told me that she knew how to call to the Guardians,” Tau said, “but she won’t be able to do it. They blindfolded her, then covered her head before taking her into Xiddeen territory, to a gathering they call the Conclave. She can’t direct the dragons there. She’ll have no idea where she is and she’s alone, no Hex.”

Zuri was breathing too fast, like she’d been sprinting. “That’s not how it works,” she said. “Remember, Tau, Entreaters send out a youngling distress call. The Entreater doesn’t need to know where she is. The dragons come to her.”

“The Guardians can sense where this Gifted is?” Hadith asked.

“Yes,” Zuri said to them both. “Yes.”

“Must go,” said Uduak, placing a large hand in the middle of Zuri’s and Tau’s backs, encouraging them forward.

“She was taken alone,” Tau said, marching again. “She needs a Hex to call a Guardian.”

“Only if she means to survive,” Zuri said.

“Wait, the plan was to have Jamilah call down a Guardian attack on the Conclave?” asked Kellan.

“Why won’t she survive?” asked Hadith.

Zuri turned to him. “If Jamilah calls a Guardian to the Conclave, it will come, it will attack, and when it realizes its youngling is not the source of the distress call, it will hold Jamilah’s soul in Isihogo until her ability to hide from the demons fails. When that happens, the demons will find and kill her.”

“Ah…,” said Hadith.

“No. I can’t accept this,” Kellan told the others. “It means my uncle negotiated in bad faith. He’s many things but would never broker a false treaty. Not for war, peace, or surrender.”

“He doesn’t know,” Zuri said. “Don’t you see? It’s a coup.”

“A coup?” Kellan shook his head. “Lady Gifted, this path twists too much.”

“And yet, she’s right…,” Hadith said. “When the queen chose peace, she went against the Royal Nobles. Peace doesn’t just end her reign; it ends them too.”

Kellan spoke to Hadith. “You think the Royal Nobles have conspired to make sure a doomed war continues? Why? So they can hold on to privilege? Power? What good is it, if they’re dead? There’s no coup or conspiracy. For one to exist, the Royal Nobles have to believe we can win.”

“That is what they believe,” Tau said.

Kellan rounded on Tau, towering over him. “Then maybe they’re right!”

“No,” Tau insisted. “Jayyed was certain. The queen is certain. There are too many hedeni, and that was before they had our gifts.”

“So,” said Themba, “peace is our only hope and the hedeni are invading.… Unfortunate.”

“There’s no need for talk of coups or conspiracy,” Kellan said. “In war, the simple answer is often the correct one. The savages lulled us with hopes of peace and launched a surprise attack when we were vulnerable.”

Zuri grabbed Tau’s and Kellan’s wrists, squeezing tight, her sudden movement making Uduak draw his blade.

“Zuri?” asked Tau.

“She’s already done it,” Zuri said.

Kellan pulled his wrist out of Zuri’s grip. “With respect, Lady Gifted—”

“The hedeni… This isn’t a first strike. We attacked them.”

Kellan threw his hands in the air and marched away.

“A Guardian attacked the Conclave,” Zuri said to his back. “It destroyed it and Jamilah is dead.”

Kellan turned to her, incredulous. He was about to say something, but Tau was no longer listening. Zuri’s words had completed the picture he’d been struggling to form and, finally, he could see it.