The call was one I had heard from the time I was old enough to walk. It was a rapid series of ascending arpeggios that culminated in a piercing shriek that was meant to imitate the cry of an enraged zahhak defending its territory in the breeding season. A chill went through me at the sound of that call, because my whole life I had been taught that it meant one thing and one thing only—the time had come to fling myself at my enemies, to set myself upon them and destroy them. I could still remember Sikander’s lectures on the subject. Of all the calls that a zahhak rider heard, that was the one she had to answer with the utmost attention, the one that required from her every last measure of her courage.
I was stunned to see the effect it had on Sultana. Her mouth had shut. Her wings were surging, her eyes were narrowed. She remembered. She knew what it meant. And so did the other zahhaks in the formation. They came racing up on my left and my right, azure-winged thunder zahhaks, their emerald eyes narrowed to slits as they waited for the order to spit lightning at their enemies. Tamara and her ice zahhaks were with us, their huge beaks clamped shut as they strained at their halters, their bodies pressing themselves into the attack. And while Padmini and the fire zahhaks of Registan were strangers to Nizami trumpet calls, the sudden intensity of the other animals around them galvanized them too. They were ready for this fight.
I put the trumpet back in its pouch for the second time in as many minutes, but my heart wasn’t nearly as heavy as it had been a moment before. Now, as the acid zahhaks closed the last few hundred yards toward us, I thought we had a fighting chance.
“We blow a hole for the others!” I cried, though I didn’t know if anyone could hear me. It didn’t matter. They’d hear Sultana. I pointed her snout right at the Mahisagari zahhak directly opposite me. I thought it was Ahmed himself flying it. He was dead in front of me, coming on with everything he had. There were scarcely three hundred yards between us. He wouldn’t have much time to dodge.
“Thunder!” I shouted.
Sultana’s jaws yawned wide and every hair on my body stood on end as the static built in the air, the tingle of it on my skin making my heartbeat quicken. The air was torn asunder an instant later by an explosion that made the swivel guns of Zindh seem like children’s toys, and a brilliant bolt of violet light crackled across the sky.
Ahmed’s zahhak rolled hard right, banking sharply and diving away, narrowly avoiding being struck dead by Sultana’s lightning. She turned and climbed, racing back toward me, but it was too little, too late. She’d never get a shot of her own. She was going to have to chase us again, and by then we’d have hit the fire zahhaks, just like I’d planned.
All around me, thunder cracked and bolts of lightning streaked across the sky. Indigo feathers and emerald scales exploded off one Mahisagari zahhak, and then a second and a third, as six thunder zahhaks let loose with everything they had. The center of the enemy formation disintegrated as riders banked hard away from the danger, creating a clear lane for us to surge through.
But the merge wasn’t over yet. We crossed into the range of the acid zahhaks, and the half dozen animals that had held their formation spat globs of green, sticky poison at a speed that beggared belief. But at the same instant, the fire zahhaks of Registan and the ice zahhaks of Khevsuria returned fire with their own breath weapons, and for a moment I forgot that I was in a battle—I was struck by the awful beauty of glittering white trails of ice, hot streaks of fire, and glistening green orbs of acid all crossing over one another in a single patch of sky.
Though at least two of the acid zahhaks had taken aim at me, both of the shots missed wide, and Sultana carried on in her climb toward the Yaruban fire zahhaks, which were just a few seconds behind their Mahisagari counterparts. I glanced left and right and was startled to find that my formation was still intact. So far so good. We’d survived the first onslaught; now it was time for the second.
I didn’t know who was riding the fire zahhak in the center of the Yaruban formation, whether it was Karim’s cousin or his uncle or some other man, but I knew that if I struck him down, my fliers would take heart and his would be filled with fear. While adrenaline was carrying us through this battle, that couldn’t last forever. Our zahhaks would tire and they would slow, and we needed an edge when that moment came.
“Get her, girl,” I whispered to Sultana, making sure she was aimed at a particularly dark-colored fire zahhak, her burgundy scales contrasting sharply with the bright gold of her belly. As beautiful as she was, she needed to die. “Thunder!”
Sultana barked lightning once more, the bolt hammering the fire zahhak full in the face, blasting her right in the crest of thick scales that protected the back of her neck. I waited for her wings to crumple, for her to fall from the sky, but she just kept coming, and the men of Yaruba raised a war cry that was so loud it rang in my ears even hundreds of yards away. I’d just given them hope and stolen it from the heart of every flier in my formation. I cursed myself for my stupidity. Sikander had trained me better than to try to break through the heaviest scales of a fire zahhak.
“Shoot for their wings!” I shrieked.
“Thunder!” Sakshi cried, and Ragini let loose with a bolt of lightning that tore
