touched his shoulders, and slumped lifeless. Elsewhere riders fell, skewered by a handful of arrows, yet others continued fighting despite their wounds.
More soldiers, clearly allied with the riders, burst in through the gate. Female archers filled the air with barbed projectiles. Monks curled up around shafts sped deep into their bellies. And then Kushite warriors, led by a giant in mail, brandished oval shields and stabbing spears. A few monks had managed to obtain pole arms and dueled with the invaders. Though the monks had trained for ages to be swift and deadly, the larger spearmen fought with a zeal for slaughter beyond Tamara’s comprehension. They needed a lot of killing.
Shocked, she hesitated, and that saved her life. A misshapen man on horseback pointed his sword in her direction. “Get her with the others.” He reined away as two lightly armored men moved to grab her.
For a moment she wilted in their grasp. As they tightened their grip, she stomped on their feet. One fist swung down, delivering a sharp blow to a groin, while the other went up, crushing a nose. As one man sank to his knees, she slammed the other face-first into the wall, then darted off toward the monastery’s interior.
“Where is Master Fassir?” She shouted the question a half-dozen times, but never got an answer. She reached the top of the veranda stairs, looking back from where she and Fassir had spoken the day before. More troops poured into the courtyard, and more monks died, the morning’s peace forever shattered.
The slaughter would have been complete at that point, and she would have died with the rest, save for one thing. The staccato rumbling had been the cavalry, but the lower, more consistent thunder had come from a vehicle she never could have imagined existing. The first she saw of it was the stout wooden ram crashing through the battlement above the monastery’s gate. That the falling stones crushed monk and invader alike seemed of little concern to few, and of almost none to the man who stood atop the land ship’s forecastle.
Arms upraised, clad in black leather armor that devoured the sun’s early light, the man seemed more a god than a mortal. He peered down from the heights, surveying all the carnage. The path of a single arrow did not concern him, nor did the flight of a spear. One monk shot at him. The arrow struck the rail by his waist, but the land ship’s master gave it no notice.
And a moment later a dozen black-fletched arrows pierced the monk’s heart in recompense for his temerity.
For just a moment, as the last stone fell and the land ship squeezed into the gate, the battle stopped. Tamara even stopped breathing. The home she had always known, the place that had been her sanctuary, had been broken by a demigod. He was not, she knew, the warrior of Fassir’s vision, but she feared that he
A hand grabbed her forearm and yanked her away from the courtyard. She spun, a hand coming up in a palm strike to the face, but Fassir blocked it easily. “Come with me, Tamara.”
“Who was that?”
“It’s best you don’t know. If you have his name and think on it, he can find you.”
She blinked. “How did he find me here?”
“You don’t have his name. I do.” Fassir dragged her deeper into the monastery grounds, toward the western gate. “We hid you and never thought he might have sought me. I should have sent you to Hyrkania sooner.”
She stopped. “I’m not leaving. Our people are dying.”
Fassir’s voice became edged with steel. “It is for the sake of
A company of twenty spearmen poured into the little courtyard. “We have our orders.”
Fassir pushed Tamara toward the western gate and the coach waiting there. One monk sat ready to drive the team of four, and a half-dozen others had mounted up to ride as guards. “Go, Tamara. I prepared the coach against this. Go.”
“I don’t want to leave you here, Master.”
“Deprive me of my fun?”
“Master!”
“Do you trust me, Tamara?”
She nodded. “With my life. With everything I—”
“Then ask no more questions, and do as I say.”
The intensity of his stare forced her back. She retreated from him as if half asleep. She did not want to leave, but he had given her no choice.
Fassir, his hands open, entered the semicircle of warriors. “Your orders end with me.”
Though she knew she should have run to the coach, and though the shouts of the other monks implored her to do so, she hesitated, hypnotized by her master. She had only ever known him as a demanding yet gentle teacher. In exercises, he would bring students to the point where they could seriously injure themselves, then release them and calmly explain their errors.
With the invading spearmen he showed no restraint, and his demonstrations of their errors did not save them from pain. The first of the invaders laughed as he rushed forward, stabbing a spear at Fassir’s chest. The old man turned on a foot, letting the spear pass between body and arm. Before the attacker could recover from his lunge, Fassir had flowed forward. He jammed his left elbow into the man’s face, then plucked the spear from him. Fassir returned to his spot, spinning the spear with the ease and abandon of a boy idly twirling a stick.
Then he cast it aside. It clattered against the courtyard’s cobblestones.
As Tamara climbed into the waiting coach, her master beckoned the rest of the invaders forward. With a clatter of hooves and the cracking of a whip, Tamara fled the monastery and yet allowed herself to imagine that her master still fought and that all was not lost.
CHAPTER 19
MARIQUE STRUGGLED MIGHTILY and succeeded in resisting the temptation to stop in the center of the monastery courtyard to bask in the ebon glow of her father’s victory. She told herself that this was because she had significant work to do. Her part in his victory—in their victory—had not yet begun. She hoped he would notice how quickly she fell to her work, advancing even in the face of the monks’ continued resistance.
She made slow her advance toward the main temple, flanked by her father’s Kushite general, Ukafa. She kept her head high, and brought her right hand up higher. Each finger had been capped with a silver talon of Stygian manufacture. Too delicate to be used to flense an enemy, they had other, more subtle uses. Sunlight lanced from them as Marique thrummed the dying threads of the magick wards that had hidden the monastery. Soon all of the monks’ secrets would be open to her.
Ukafa’s Kushite spearmen had gathered young female monks onto the temple’s top step. A few of the women had been bloodied in combat, but none seriously, as per her father’s instructions. Demanding restraint of the warriors had doubtless cost some lives, but the dull ends of spears and the flat of swords had been enough to herd the women together.
Marique was equal parts lioness hunting and empress victorious. Of the dozen women gathered above, three were too young and two far too old to be the one she sought. She did not segregate them, however, since they appeared the most nervous.
She chose one of possible candidates and approached. The woman shied from her, cringing halfway down to a grovel, but Marique caught her chin in her left hand. She raised the woman up, then tipped her head back. Her right hand came up. She stroked a talon’s needle-sharp point over pale flesh, drawing a single drop of blood.
Marique caught the blood on the talon, then delicately deposited it on her tongue. In an instant she knew this was not the one she wanted, but she allowed herself to savor the taste. The girl did have promise, she had power, but not the right type, nor in sufficient quantity.
Marique smiled. “You are not the one I seek. Go.”
The monk stared at her in utter disbelief, then ducked her head in thanks. She darted past Marique, keeping her eyes downcast. Which is why she never saw Ukafa’s headman’s sword come around. The curved blade took the woman at the base of the skull, shearing through her neck cleanly. Her head slowly spun, her body sagged. Her
