Gilene shrugged away the complaint. Her mother’s irritation didn’t bother her, nor did the speculative stares of her siblings or those of the villagers when she moved among them.
Her role as Beroe’s annual savior had made her an outsider years earlier—among the villagers and within her own family—and she felt the isolation even more now, only this time, it was she who held herself apart.
She missed the Sky Below with its open spaces, its horse herds, and black qaras. She missed Saruke with her odd bits of philosophical advice. She even missed the dour Tamura, whose devotion to her mother and brother and to Arita was a thing of beauty to behold.
Most of all, she missed the man she once thought she’d sworn to hate and ended up loving. Every night, when she closed her eyes, Gilene pictured his fierce, elegant face, and the emptiness inside her yawned wide and deep.
Beroe had been her birthplace and where she’d grown up, but she no longer belonged here. Coming back had been a necessity. The distance between her and her family stretched even wider now, but they were still her family, still at the mercy of the village elders, who wouldn’t hesitate to use them in forcing Gilene’s cooperation to act as a tithe.
Azarion had been right to call them all cowards. They were, and that cowardice had perpetuated a terrible assumption, one she had strengthened for the last five years. She prayed the Savatar and their allies would win the day, claim victory, and end the Rites once and for all. No more tithes, no more bleak duty to a place that used her guilt and her shriveling affection for her family as chains to trap her. Maybe this time, when she wielded fire, it would be in the service of other saviors.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Azarion blinked away the sweat that dripped into his eyes, wishing for a blizzard or even just a quick squall of snow flurries to cool the air. Snow still lay on the ground this early in spring, and nighttime frost iced everything before the sun rose to melt it away. It might still be cold to someone in everyday clothing, but harnessed in the encompassing armor of a heavy cavalryman, he roasted under the pale sun.
He sat his horse amid four thousand Savatar heavy cavalry occupying a low rise that gently sloped toward the walled capital of Kraelag. The land between the city and this hill had not yet been plowed for planting, and it stretched flat and clear for at least a league. On the opposite side, the Kraelian army had amassed several legions of soldiers. A Savatar scout had returned the previous night from reconnoitering the enemy.
He had bowed to Erakes, Azarion, and the other four atamans gathered together in Erakes’s crowded war qara along with the captains who would command the squadrons of archers supporting the heavy cavalry. “Atamans, from what we saw, the Kraelians are three times our number at least. Four thousand cavalry, four thousand light infantry, and twenty-five thousand heavy infantry. A general named Mal Vornak leads them.”
Erakes turned to Azarion. “Do you know him?”
“By name only. He’s a seasoned commander and led the Kraelians to victory against the Prathics and the Oseks. With almost forty thousand men at his disposal, this will be a battle hard-fought.”
Erakes shrugged. “We knew that when we planned this attack.”
Everything leading to this confrontation had been hard-fought for the Savatar. They had used winter to their advantage, guiding their tough horses over snowy terrain and rivers frozen so solid, they didn’t crack under the weight of the thousands of riders who traveled them like roads to cut the distance it took to reach Kraelag.
When the weather was kinder, they trekked twenty-five leagues in a day, a grueling pace no Kraelian horse could handle but that the steppe ponies conquered with ease. They subsisted on the brittle grasses browned by cold and buried under snow while the Savatar themselves lived off fermented mare’s milk and whatever game they could hunt in the harsh depths of winter. By the time Krael recognized the danger to its capital, the steppe clans were nearly at Kraelag’s gates.
The standing army assigned to protect the capital was drawn from a ring of garrisons that surrounded the rich farmlands and rivers that kept Kraelag’s citizens and its vassal towns and villages fed. Azarion suspected Mal Vornak had ordered every one of them emptied and their soldiers marched immediately to the capital. So far Krael was doing everything Azarion and the other atamans had hoped.
Three leagues away, the vulnerable Manoret Harbor with its valuable granaries had fallen to a squadron of Savatar, who now held it. No doubt a messenger dispatched by a desperate Kraelian harbormaster had reached the capital with the news. Azarion didn’t think the man lived beyond his telling of events. The last thing those in power in the capital wanted was for its populace to learn they might starve behind the walls.
With the inclusion of Nunari clans that had turned renegade against their Kraelian masters, the Savatar horde had swelled in number, though, as the scout predicted, the Kraelian army they were preparing to fight outnumbered them at least three to one.
The Kraelian army advanced toward the Savatar force. This day, Azarion expected they’d water the soil with blood instead of rain.
At Erakes’s signal, the Savatar beat war drums and blew the slender, dog-headed horns whose trumpeting sounded like a cross between an enraged woman and a howling wolf.
The Kraelian army continued to advance with infantry at the center and cavalry on the wings. At a series of shouted commands, they paused and re-formed into a hollow square, lined twelve-deep on all sides, before continuing their march.
Erakes, more experienced than Azarion in large-scale combat, grinned at the sight. “Smart man. He’s re-formed his infantry to keep from being outflanked, but at the cost of mobility.”
All around them, the Savatar heavy horse waited, eager and impatient to engage their enemy. Beyond the Kraelian line, Kraelag shimmered in the spring sun, a corrupt jewel waiting to be shattered.
Azarion studied the hollow square. “If we send the heavy horse in first, we may not be able to break the line. There are too many of them.”
Erakes nodded and sent up a series of signal whistles, calling the captains to his side. “Send in your archers,” he told them. “Surround the square and rain down arrows until the Kraelians can’t see the sky above them. Draw out their cavalry from the wings.” He turned to Azarion. “Prepare your heavy horse. When their cavalry draws closer to us, you’ll attack.”
Azarion left his commander’s side to gather his forces in readiness. He caught a glimpse of his fierce sister galloping past him, first arrow already nocked into place as she raced with the other Savatar light cavalry toward the Kraelian line.
In no time the sky had turned black with the hail of arrows as Savatar archers harried the square’s perimeter, shooting straight into the line or up in the air where the arrows fell from above like sharpened rain, pinning arms and shoulders to shields and feet to the ground.