Nasim peered into the darkness of the streets that led out of the square, wondering if the men of Yrstanla were lying in wait. It felt as though a musket were trained on the crown of his head. He scrunched his brow and the feeling faded, but the longer he stayed there, just waiting, the more pronounced it became. He had just succumbed to rubbing his forehead to clear the feeling away when a rook flapped down and landed near his feet. He hadn’t expected one so soon. They had gone no more than three hundred paces from the sight of the short skirmish.
“To your left,” the rook said, “move along the second street you come to.”
There was something about this rook that seemed different. He knew immediately another Matri had assumed it, though which one it might be he had no idea.
“Where is Saphia?” Nasim asked.
“She’s needed elsewhere,” the rook said. “Sariya has reached the Spar.”
Indeed, even as the rook spoke, the sound of cannons rose until Nasim could feel it on the back of his neck. The tops of the towers at the center of the square were lit by the flashes. Even the clouds high above glowed momentarily bright.
As the rook flapped away, Nasim could practically smell the scent of the Matri. They rode the aether, and he had become more and more sensitive to their passage. He knew few enough of these women, but surely the Matri of Vostroma and Nodhvyansk and Bolgravya were present. Yet he couldn’t shake another feeling of strong familiarity.
“Are you well?” Ashan asked.
Nasim wasn’t sure how to answer. It was foolish, these thoughts. One Matra or another, what did it matter?
“I’m well,” he said.
They headed northwest, going to the place the rook had indicated. As they did, Nasim called upon the akhoz. It was time… Time for them to taste blood.
That was when a meaty thump sounded next to him. As the sharp report of the musket echoed from the far side of the square, Ashan crumpled to the ground, a dark stain welling through his robes.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
N ikandr stood over Grigory, his breath coming in great gasps. Grigory’s men, these soldiers and windsmen of Bolgravya, stared at him, some with enmity in their eyes, but many with neutral expressions and some with outright relief.
“Take him below and tend to him,” Nikandr said to the nearest of the windsmen, and then he turned to Avayom. All eyes were on the two of them, and Nikandr was not at all sure that he had their loyalty. It felt as though they only hoped to be rid of Grigory, and now that they had, they would take their ship and be done with him.
“Come with me,” Nikandr said. He strode to the kapitan’s cabin at the rear of the ship. Once the two of them were inside, Nikandr closed the door.
“Why did you suggest bazh an bazh?” he asked.
“Forgive me, My Lord Prince, but there seemed to be some question as to the authority we were to follow.”
“Go on.”
Avayom’s grizzled face, his steely eyes, did not waver. “The Lord Prince seemed to have misread the orders from his brother, our Lord Duke of Bolgravya.”
He meant the scroll that had been sealed by Konstantin and delivered by Nikandr himself.
“Did Grigory show you those orders?”
Avayom stood straighter, as resolute as he had been on deck. “He did not, My Lord Prince.”
“Then how do you know of them?”
“My duty is to my Duke, first and foremost. His brother refused to show them to me, so I made it my business to find the scroll while it lay unattended during a drunken spell.”
Nikandr took a deep breath, coming to the most important question. “Will you follow me, Sotnik Kirilov?”
Avayom struck his heels and bowed his head. “We are yours to command, My Lord Prince.”
“We go to fight,” Nikandr said slowly, “and we fight with the Maharraht.”
This time it took longer for Avayom to respond, but he bowed his head once again. “If they fight our enemies, then we will fight with them.”
Nikandr took him into an embrace and the two of them kissed each other’s cheeks. “The mountain is steep,” Nikandr said, giving him half of an old Anuskayan proverb.
Avayom smiled sadly, but his eyes were fierce and grim. “Then we climb.”
As the bitter winter wind cut through his coat to numb his skin, Nikandr sat in one of two skiffs just launched from the Yarost. They flew away from the hidden bay Soroush had led their ships to. They were tightly packed- nineteen fighting men of Anuskaya in his skiff, another twenty in the other. The men, their breath trailing behind them like white streamers, seemed tense, but not overly so. These were the kind of men that could channel such tension into precise, sometimes furious, action. One of them sitting near the bow of the other skiff, a veteran desyatnik with a scar running down the left side of his face, caught Nikandr’s eye and nodded. His men were ready. Nikandr nodded back, proud of them, these soldiers of his homeland.
Soroush and his Maharraht trailed in seven more skiffs. He brought seventy-five in all, bringing their total to a little over a hundred-one sotni of men to stand against all the Hratha and the soldiers of Yrstanla. They had enough munitions for one sustained battle, no more, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. Hopefully they could surprise Muqallad before it was too late.
And yet, as they flew over the lip of the valley and began heading southeast toward Baressa, Nikandr felt small. They were not enough. They wouldn’t make a difference. As the sun began to set in the west, Nikandr could still see the Sea of Khurkhan, dark and deadly in the distance. Ahead, over the tops of the green forest of spruce and pine and white-barked birch, were leagues of flying before they would reach the straits.
“What will we do when we come to a city of two hundred thousand?” Styophan asked Nikandr as the sky was growing dark.
“We do what can be done.”
No sooner had Nikandr said these words than he felt a shift among the winds. The weather had been calm, but now it quieted to the point that all was still. The trees below did not sway. The clouds above did not drift. The whole world seemed caught in amber.
Nikandr felt nervous, not only because of the odd quality of the weather, but because he could feel the changes through his hezhan. The spirit felt near-perhaps because of their proximity to the straits-but it also felt drawn, and drawn away, as if something momentous were calling it from afar. The havaqiram-including Anahid, who had some skill with the wind-reported something similar. They were forced to draw upon the winds more deeply than they had before.
Despite all this, they made steady progress. Nikandr was watching the horizon for any signs of ships when he felt something different. It was far in the distance, a sense of discomfort in his chest not unlike what he’d felt when Nasim had darkened his soulstone.
Except this…
This felt…
A column of flame shot up into the sky. Off the landward bow, it climbed hungrily and tore into the layer of clouds that hung high above the land. It burned brighter than the dying sun. It eclipsed the stars, a thread of roiling light cutting the sky in two.
No one said a word. Everyone here save the men of Bolgravya knew what this was, and those that didn’t were too shocked to say anything.
Nikandr could see wonder in the faces of his men and the Maharraht, both. There was worry as well, and a growing sense of desperation that did not bode well for the coming night.
The third piece of the Atalayina had reached Muqallad, and he had now fused it to the other two. The stone was whole, giving him the power he so desperately sought.
