even from this distance.
The smell of it-burning hair and burning skin-filled the clearing. It made him retch. His mouth filled with saliva, and he spit to clear the taste of it.
Bersuq had somehow been spared from the flames. Surely he was protected by the suuraqiram nearby, but it could not last long. His body twisted from the pain, but he continued to hold the pieces of the Atalayina above him.
The chanting rose higher. The calls of the akhoz became little more than inhuman screams rising above the sound of the roaring flames.
Bersuq could not last forever. Soon it became too much. He screamed, still holding tight to the Atalayina. His robes caught fire, and then his hair and his beard. He shivered from the pain as his screams became a piercing cry that rose above all other sounds.
Nikandr followed the black smoke up and into the sky, if only to be free from this horrific vision for a few moments. That was when movement among the clouds caught his eye. Flying low, above the trees to the north, was a ship. He recognized it immediately. It was the Chaika.
A moment later, the ground near the outer ring of akhoz blossomed into a high plume of fire and dirt and ashes, a resounding boom coming a split-second later. Three of the posts flew up and outward, the akhoz still attached. They twirled lazily until they struck the ground near the feet of the chanting Maharraht.
Muqallad raised his hands, but as he did another cannon shot shattered the ground in front of him. Two Maharraht nearby were thrown wide of the blast. What happened to Muqallad, Nikandr didn’t see, for the crowd was now in disarray. Some were taking up muskets and firing on the ship while the qiram drew upon their hezhan. Others continued to chant, so lost in the ritual were they. But most took cover in the nearby trees.
Nikandr looked up to his chains. He jumped and tried to fling the chains up and over the spike. But he was weak, and the motion caused the sockets of his shoulders to scream in pain after remaining stretched and immobile for so long. As the Chaika slipped over the clearing and began heading over the far side and beyond the trees, he tried one last time, and this time the chain came rattling down.
He lost his balance and collapsed. When he finally managed to come to his feet, he found four men standing before him-Rahid and the three Hratha that had brought him from Siafyan.
Rahid’s men bore muskets, while Rahid, his sword held loosely in his right hand, used his free hand to grab Nikandr’s chains and pull him into the forest. Nikandr resisted, pulling on the chain in a vain attempt to remain in the clearing, until two of Rahid’s men struck him with the butt of their muskets, forcing him onward.
A sudden rise in pitch from the clearing made all of them turn back. The akhoz burned white, their voices adding to one another, driving those closest to put their hands over their ears. A moment later, Nikandr did the same, as did Rahid and the Hratha. Bersuq fell to the flames at last. The Atalayina slipped from his grasp and was lost.
Only then did the sound of the akhoz begin to wane. The moment that it did, Rahid ordered his men to continue. They moved beyond a rise, and into a stand of trees. They could still hear the flames and the akhoz and the occasional snap of musket fire, but they were effectively hidden.
Rahid’s men fanned out behind him. Rahid stepped forward, facing Nikandr, the tip of his sword swinging back and forth, as if he were itching to swing it.
But then Nikandr saw hanging around Rahid’s neck a chain. His chain. The one that held his soulstone.
Rahid noticed Nikandr’s lingering gaze. He pulled the stone out and held it up for Nikandr to see, and then he let it fall against his black robes. The chalcedony stone glimmered dully in the waning light. “They say you can feel those who’ve worn your stones. Is it so?”
Strangely, these words served only to calm Nikandr’s coursing blood. What Rahid said was true. Grigory had done this to him years ago, and for the short time he’d worn the stone afterward-before placing it in Nasim’s mouth to draw him away from Adhiya-he’d felt the taint, felt Grigory’s hatred of him. There was no doubt that the same would be true now, but he had come to accept that the ancients worked in strange ways. If this was something they had chosen for him-to have his stone worn by a Maharraht-then he would accept it.
“A pity you won’t be afforded the chance.” He spat at Nikandr’s feet. “It is long past time I put an end to your presence on these shores.”
“Tell yourself what you wish,” Nikandr said, “but you were the trespassers here, not me. You came and you raped your sister tribe. You’re worse than anything the Landed ever did, for you did this to your brothers and your sisters. You did this to their children.”
Rahid stalked forward and raised his sword high with both hands. He brought it down and Nikandr, who’d been hoping for such an attack, dodged backward. He was still hobbled by the rope, but he knew its length well and was able to compensate with short, quick steps. Rahid swung again, and again. He came closer, for he was pressing the advantage of his longer strides, but Nikandr was still able to outpace him.
And then Rahid became too bold. He came in fast, his sword swung in at an angle. Nikandr spread his manacled hands wide and allowed the sword to strike the chain, allowed it to yank his arms sideways.
This simple action halted the blade. Nikandr twisted his arms, twisted the chain around the blade, and while he did he lunged forward and grabbed Rahid’s wrists and slammed his forehead against Rahid’s face.
Rahid turned and tried to pull away, but Nikandr had hooked his foot behind Rahid’s, and Rahid went sprawling.
A quick jerk of his arms and the blade was free. Before Rahid’s men could react, Nikandr twisted it around and brought it down in one fierce motion. The tip drove down through Rahid’s chest and into the cold earth beneath him.
Rahid’s eyes went wide. He shivered and grabbed for the sword. The blade cut his fingers deeply, but he didn’t seem to notice. He stared into Nikandr’s eyes, coughed once, twice, and then his head fell back as he stared at the sky, unmoving.
Nikandr yanked the blade free.
By now the men in their black robes and turbans had pulled their muskets up. Nikandr dodged as one fired. The shot went wide and Nikandr brought the sword down sharply across the rope tying his ankles together.
He dodged another, but the shot bit into his thigh. He tried to roll to his feet, but he put too much weight on his wounded leg and fell back down.
He scrabbled away on the soft floor of the forest until the third man pressed him down with the barrel of his musket. He was young, this one, the youngest of the three. He stood there, staring at Nikandr, glancing back at the other men, before turning back to Nikandr, his eyes hard.
The man’s head jerked back sharply as a musket shot took him in the face. A burst of skin and red flew from the back of his head, showering his comrades. They both blinked and stepped back, their eyes shocked as they watched him fall to the ground. Then they looked beyond Nikandr, the direction from which the shot had come.
Nikandr turned and found Soroush charging forward with seven others-six Maharraht, and Jahalan.
Jahalan had a stone in his circlet. He stopped-allowing the others to continue-and spread his arms wide.
The Hratha pulled their shamshirs and advanced. Had Nikandr’s allies not been barreling forward, they might have been more sure with their weapons, but as it was, they were rushed and clumsy. Nikandr fended off their first hasty swings. A musket shot zipped in and narrowly missed the one closest to Nikandr. A moment later, the wind whipped up through the boughs of the trees above them. Pine needles swirled through the air, stinging the skin. Nikandr was not the center of the wind’s attention, however. It focused on the Hratha, forced them to hide their faces or lose their eyes to needles and pinecones and fallen bark.
They had just begun backing away when Soroush and his Maharraht arrived and drove swords through them.
Nikandr pulled himself over to Rahid and slipped his soulstone necklace from around his neck. When he slipped it over his head, he could immediately feel his hezhan. He ached to draw upon it, to summon it, but he did not. It felt too close, and for the moment things seemed to be in hand. Better to commune with his hezhan when he had the time to be patient.
Soroush and another of his men helped Nikandr to his feet, and then put Nikandr’s arms around their shoulders and helped him to shamble eastward. They moved as quickly as they could, but Nikandr was slowing them down. Eventually the forest thinned and left them on the edge of a meadow. Hidden behind a rocky hill ahead of them was a ship, one of the Maharraht’s. Beyond it, floating low on the wind and well out to sea, was the Chaika.
