When they were finished, he once again sought out the Kraelian woman who had acted as the escapees’ mouthpiece. He found her standing not far from where the others huddled around a fire, her back to them as she stood on the remains of a tree stump and surveyed the battlefield where dead men and dead horses lay strewn. She didn’t turn when he came to stand beside her, and her voice held a far-away quality, as if his presence was nothing more than a vague interruption of her contemplation.
“When your battle is over and the fields replanted, the crops that grow there will whisper the names of the dead. Most don’t stay, but those who linger will speak to the living when the wind blows and the rain falls.”
Another time, and a worm of unease might have crawled across Azarion’s skin at her words. Now, he barely noted them. “The fire witch. How was she when you last saw her?”
Her focus turned from the far place to settle on him. “Are you Azarion Ataman?” He nodded. “She was well. She burned a guard to gain the keys that opened the cell door.” She cocked her head to one side. “You know her better than the others do.”
He liked to believe he knew her best. “Yes.”
Her round eyes gleamed for a moment. “I’ll pray for you both that she survives to return to you.”
“She doesn’t believe in the gods.”
The Kraelian woman’s smile enhanced the strong line of her jaw. “That’s all right. Most of us don’t.”
He had nothing else to ask her that wouldn’t be a repeat of his earlier questions, so he left her to her odd notions of crops and spirits and returned to the camp’s center. He found the six Savatar who volunteered to sneak into the city standing outside Erakes’s qara, among them a familiar and beloved face.
“Why did I know you’d be one of the six?” He scowled at his sister.
Tamura tied her braids into a knot at the back of her head, shoving a pin into the mass to hold it in place. She wore an unapologetic grin. “You would have been shocked if I weren’t.”
She and the other five had removed anything on them that shone or might catch the sun’s glare. Their long tunics were gone, replaced with short leather doublets and tighter breeches. They had set aside their bows and quivers full of arrows, carrying instead a myriad of short knives that made them lethal but didn’t hinder them as they traversed tight spaces.
Erakes eyed the six with satisfaction. “You all understand what to do?” At their nods, he said, “May Agna be with you then.”
Amid half-hearted protests and empty threats to emasculate him if he didn’t let her go, Azarion embraced his sister until her back cracked. “Be careful,” he whispered in her ear. “For my sake and our mother’s as well.” He set her away from him, and she shook like a wet dog before glowering at him.
A solemn affection softened the glower. “If I find Gilene, I’ll bring her out of there. I swear it.”
She saluted before turning on her heel to follow her companions through the camp to where their horses waited to carry them to a rendezvous point. From there, they would go on foot to reach the vulnerable entrance described by the Kraelian woman.
The Kraelian army, its ordered lines broken at first by the catapult volleys and the empress’s shocking injury, had quickly re-formed. Shields staggered by the perimeter’s soldiers formed a shield wall against direct arrow hits. The interior fighters followed suit, raising their shields above their heads to create a roof against the storm of arrows the Savatar would fire into the sky so that they fell down in an arc on the formation.
The sun had not yet centered itself in the sky when the catapults on the ramparts fired more shrapnel into the air, this time to land on the edges of the Kraelian formations where the Savatar light cavalry circled, darting in and out on fast horses to fire directly into the shield wall.
Azarion’s reduced squadron of heavy horse was broken up and re-formed under the remaining three squadrons. They stood at the edge of the encampment, waiting for the signal that the catapults had been disarmed.
He stared at the city walls, fancying that, if he just looked a little harder, he could see through them to the arena where Gilene stayed behind. What had she been thinking not to escape with the other women? She’d been brave to protect them in a way they couldn’t protect themselves from any who might pursue them, but she could have followed once they were no longer pursued.
“Why, Gilene?” he said under his breath. “Why did you stay?”
The moment Tamura and her group opened the gates, he’d be the first to charge through. He cared nothing for looting or pillaging or burning the buildings. All he wanted was his agacin.
The horses and warriors around him grew restless with the waiting, and the armor and barding they wore grew ever hotter in the sun as it approached midday.
An inhuman wail suddenly split the air and set the horses to whinnying and rearing. Below the Savatar encampment, the Kraelian line rippled with a collective shudder, and the shield walls wavered. Horse archers clutched the manes of their mares and abandoned their arrow shots to stay in the saddles and control their frenzied mounts.
It was an unearthly sound, vast and piercing. Another followed, and every man and woman around Azarion gasped and covered their ears. The horses went berserk, many of them throwing their riders before bolting away, either into the forests or to the rolling hills behind the Savatar encampment.
Azarion instinctively raised his arms to cover his face as a colossal whirlwind of fire suddenly blasted up from the center of the city on an invisible concussion wave of pressure that made his ears pop. The air around him sucked in toward the city, bowing nearby trees, before exploding outward, shattering the city’s outer barbican walls.
The damage the catapults did was nothing compared to the catastrophic destruction of masonry debris and wood shrapnel flying through the air. The Kraelian formations collapsed, obliterated by a howling gale that hurled them about like leaves in an autumn storm.
The monstrous column of fire expanded, and within the gaps of the broken walls, Azarion saw people running and screaming as they fled before the onslaught of what was surely holy retribution.
This fire moved with purpose. Fast, destructive, it devoured everything before it as it spun through the city, leaving conflagrations in its wake. Kraelian soldiers still alive and mobile ran into the wood or vainly sought to capture horses racing past them. The Savatar fled the field as well, their mares stretched low to the ground as they strove to outrun whatever monstrosity had just erupted from the center of Kraelag and turned it into fiery rubble.
When his horse fought him hard enough to nearly buck him off its back, Azarion dismounted and jogged farther down the slope leading to the deserted battlefield, ignoring the warning cries of his people behind him. His frantic gaze swept the path his sister and the other Savatar had taken, praying they hadn’t yet made it to the city when it literally exploded before everyone’s eyes.