Rapidly, the ships disintegrated, then sank. When the last vessel of the invading fleet went down to the bottom of the harbor, the Ishimbis stopped moving. It was as though they were ... waiting.
In silence, the defenders of Khambawe lined up at the edge of the docks and stared out at a scene of sheer desolation, starkly illuminated by the night-sun the power of Almovaar had placed in the sky.
Floating scraps of wood and sail-cloth were all that was left of the Uloans’ ships. Human forms bobbed amid the flotsam – most of them dead, others alive. Some of the survivors swam aimlessly, pushing corpses and wreckage aside. Others simply floated and stared at the sky. And there were those who shouted defiance and waved their fists at their enemies.
The defenders, Matile and Fidi alike, looked at each other. They knew what the Ishimbi were waiting for; they knew what had to be done. Although their blood had only shortly before pulsed with the lust to kill, they loathed the thought of undertaking the final, gruesome task that lay before them.
Still, it had to be done ...
Soldiers stripped off their cumbersome armor. Everyone, military and others alike, put aside their heavier weapons, took up whatever knives and daggers they could find, and placed them between their teeth. Then they jumped into the water and swam toward the defeated, weaponless Uloans, who remained hopelessly defiant while they waited to be slain.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Aftermath
1
The glare of the new day’s sun painted a pitiless portrait of the devastation the Uloans’ invasion had wrought on Khambawe. The night-sphere fashioned by the Almovaad Adepts and the Amiyas in their Oneness had long since disappeared. Even the mist that constantly drifted in from the sea had thinned, laying bare the extent of the worst damage that had been done to the Jewel City since the long-ago end of the Storm Wars.
In the harbor, wreckage from sunken and half-sunken ships pounded against the docks like the drums of a death-god. Bloated corpses blanketed the surface. The small amount of water that could be seen between the bodies and the ships was tinged with red. Already, sharks and other sea-scavengers were devouring the remains, of which most were Uloan. But more than a few Matile dead provided food for the scavengers as well, for the Uloans had fought until the last of them died. As the sea-creatures competed viciously for their repasts, the harbor roiled as though a storm stirred its waters.
The Ishimbi statues once again stood in their places at dockside. They were still wet, and the dampness caused the dark stone surface of the gigantic carvings to glisten in the sun. Tufts of seaweed from the harbor clung to the Ishimbi, mute testimony to the events of the night before, which before then would have been thought to be possible only in legends.
On the streets of Khambawe, the survivors of the melee wandered in weary aimlessness, or lay exhausted amid the bodies of the fallen. Lakes of blood congealed on the paving stones. Burnt skeletons of trees stood like mute sentinels guarding a realm of ghosts. Charred timbers poked from piles of rubble where buildings proud and humble alike once stood. Soot obscured the brightly painted facades of the houses that remained standing. Market stalls lay smashed and overturned, their goods a clutter of trampled garbage.
Although it was too soon for the piles of human corpses to begin to putrefy, the inert jhumbis had long since disintegrated into heaps of clay, bones, and liquescence, exuding a reek that competed with the smell of smoke that continued to hang in the air. In the meantime, like the sharks in the harbor, the packs of hyenas that haunted the fringes of Khambawe had emerged to feast at a banquet of carrion. The survivors were too exhausted to drive them – or the buzzing clouds of flies that hovered over the bodies – away.
However the hyenas, whether they were irimu or not, avoided the noisome remains of the jhumbis.
So did the flies.
This was the face of the Matile’s victory, a success harder-won than any of the triumphs of the ancient days of conquest and glory. It was an achievement that would eventually be written into volumes of history and woven into new tapestries that would adorn the walls of the Senafa Palace, and be remembered in countless songs and stories. It was the final, definitive victory over the Matiles’ worst enemies, who were their kin before the different paths they took forced them into a conflict that obviated those ancient blood-ties.
Yet for all that, an utter defeat could not have looked much worse than the triumph the Matile had managed to achieve.
2
Tiyana awakened slowly, painfully. Outside her eyelids, the sun glowed so insistently it was impossible for her to keep her eyes closed any longer. She remembered what she had seen in the Oneness before the insensibility of sheer exhaustion overcame her: victory ... the Uloans routed ... the Ishimbi walking ... the final, horrific slaughter in the harbor ...
She blinked, opened her eyes, sat up ... and bit back a scream as a lance of agony pierced through her. Every muscle in her body ached; every heartbeat was a pulse of pain. Even her bones cried out in protest against the price the application of the ashuma of Oneness had exacted. Tiyana closed her eyes again, and waited until the worst of the aches subsided.
Of the incredibly powerful ashuma she and the others had wielded the night before, nothing remained – not even a tingle.
