Throne of Ruins (The Powers of Amur Book 5) Read online

  He pointed to his armor and the plumed helmet on his head. “And I myself go out with you, not as your Emperor, but as the King of Davrakhanda. I fight for my own home, not carried on a palanquin, but on my own two feet, bearing a sword and a spear. And I await the hour when we will destroy the Devoured and bring our wrath to the Mouth of the Devourer himself.”

  The men cheered. But there was a tremor of fear in their cheering. Sadja felt their unease.

  They knew what had happened in Majasravi. And they didn’t believe they could stop it here.

  “March out,” he commanded Bhargasa. “You lead one column. I will lead the other.”

  Bhargasa led his company out. Sadja went to the head of the other column, but Kest looked around helplessly. There was no room for the Kaleksha in the formation. Sadja pointed next to him.

  “March with me,” he said. “We take the lead.”

  They moved out. Bhargasa’s men went to the west gate, farther from the palace, while Sadja and the Kaleksha led his column toward the north. The streets of the city were nearly empty, but the commotion of the Devoured taking the gates had woken enough people that lamps glowed in many of the windows, people peering out between curtains or crouched in doorways to watch the soldiers pass.

  The west gate loomed ahead. The doors were open, and beneath its arch the black star-spattered sky glowered. A small crowd, perhaps a hundred, gathered around the gatehouse and loitered beneath the arch. Sadja wondered briefly how so few had managed to take the gate—but the gates were fortified against attack from without, not against deathless peasants hiding within the city.

  They did not flinch as Sadja and his column approached. Sadja called for a halt. Thirty yards stood between his men and the formless mob around the gate.

  “What are they doing?” Kest whispered to him.

  “They have no discipline,” Sadja said with contempt. “Untrained peasants, fearsome only because they do not die.”

  “They don’t what?”

  Sadja shook his head. He pointed his spear at the sky and shouted toward the mass at the gate. “Disperse, and the gate will be closed, or else you all will be destroyed.”

  Laughter skittered through the group at the gate. In the night’s gloom they were a formless mass, a black shadow from which limbs and faces occasionally grew clear, only to collapse again into the morass.

  “Your Empress is waiting for you,” someone from the crowd called.

  Sadja was about to call for the charge, but he hesitated. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Empress that you left in Majasravi,” the voice replied, laced with mockery. “She has come to give you another kiss.”

  “Basadi-daridarya lives?”

  At the mention of Basadi’s name, the mass of men at the gate seemed to twitch, and a hiss rose from them.

  “She is not yours anymore,” another voice called out from within the crowd. “She is the Empress of the Devoured. She is ours.”

  His breath grew cold, and a chilly anger filled his veins. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. “Yours for now,” he said. “But when I have reached the Mouth of the Devourer—”

  “You will not reach him,” the voice replied. “The Empress will bring his blessings to you instead. Perhaps you’ll even return to Majasravi in her company.”

  “Did she tell you to say this?” Sadja asked.

  Another rustle of laughter. No one answered.

  “Never mind,” Sadja said quietly. He turned to his men. “Ready your arms.”

  A clatter of spears readied and the hum of arrows set to strings.

  Sadja turned back toward the Devoured. He lowered his sword. “Now!”

  The men charged.

  At first it seemed like a rout. Arrows flew into the Devoured, and the sound of pierced flesh could be heard. Sadja and the Uluriya launched themselves into the midst of the mass of the Devoured, Sadja’s sword flying, Kest’s spear thrusting with heavy, violent strokes. Their weapons split flesh and cracked bones. The Devoured fell back.

  Then Sadja realized their error.

  A man that Sadja had cut open rose from the ground where he had fallen and swiped at Sadja’s ankle. Sadja batted his hand aside with the tip of his sword, then stepped on the man’s wrist, but the man continued to crawl forward. Sadja stepped back and let the other guards swarm past him. He kicked the man in the head and put a boot on his throat. The man squirmed and clawed—but he did not die.

  Sadja pressed down, hoping to crush the man’s throat. He didn’t die. Sadja stabbed him in the eye, all the way through to his brain. He didn’t die.

  He looked around. Their charge had pushed the Devoured back, and they had nearly reached the gatehouse. But the fallen Devoured didn’t stay fallen, and the fighting was dissolving into a formless melee as the fallen Devoured rose again to attack them from behind. He saw Kest swing his spear and impale a man—no, a woman—but even impaled on his spear she reached forward and crawled toward him, grasping at the haft and pulling herself onto the end of the spear, without even a flicker of pain in her eyes.

  For a moment Kest hesitated, then his boot kicked the woman off of his spear. He bent and grabbed her by the neck and threw her ten feet back into the crowd of the Devoured, knocking three others to the ground.

  “Push them!” Sadja shouted, the thought leaping to his lips as soon as he had formed it. “Do not kill them! Push them back!”

  He took the haft of his spear, charged forward between two of the guardsmen, and knocked the brawling Devoured back a few paces. No other order was necessary. The Kaleksha around him immediately took up the idea. They turned their spears around and with shields and blunt shafts began to batter the Devoured back.

  The Devoured behind the line crawled forward and attacked. The rear parts of the line kept them back, while Sadja and the others pushed the Devoured out, inch by inch. The Kaleksha were beasts in this kind of brawl, picking up the Devoured and hurling them through the gate to land on the stones of the road with a crunch.

  A bit more and they would be able to close the gate. He hoped that Bhargasa had done as well.

  The sky overhead had grown purple. A feeble dawn was growing in the east. The countryside beyond the gate was just beginning to reveal the orange-tinted ripples of land.

  The men pressed forward. “The gate! The gate!” Sadja shouted. They could reach the door to the gatehouse and close the gate now. Even if they trapped a few of the Devoured inside, the rest of the army would be excluded.

  Then a groan of dismay sounded through the soldiers. Cackles of glee rippled among the Devoured, and with new energy they pushed back at Sadja’s men.

  In the dawn beyond the gate, shapes were moving. At first it seemed like the land itself rippled, but in the brightening morning the reality grew clear: a massive army of Devoured, one hundred times the size of the mob at the gate, running to join the fray. This was the true army, the one that would destroy Davrakhanda. In the night, the deathless had come.

  Sadja’s men fell back. The fastest runners from the second horde joined their comrades at the gate, launching themselves against the shields of the guards. Shivers of shock passed through the men. Wails of dismay. Screams of terror. They fell back.

  “Hold!” Sadja said. “We can still take the gatehouse! Hold, and we will lock them out of the city!”

  He saw Kest and another Kaleksha man shoving back the newly-energized Devoured. But he fell back two paces. The Devoured were unarmed, clawing at him with nails and fists, but even these feeble attacks were enough to make his forearms run with blood. He staggered back.

  The numberless Devoured poured through the gate. The line of the guard bent.

  “Hold!” Sadja shouted.

  One of the guards dropped his spear and ran. He was the trigger. The other soldiers began to run. In another moment, the battle would be a rout.

  Kest and the Kaleksha stood their ground for a few seconds longer than the others. Sadja retreated to the midst of th
em and grabbed Kest’s arm.

  “Too late,” he said. “Run with me. We make it to the palace, we may be able to keep them outside.”

  One of the Devoured approached them swinging a crude cudgel. Kest kicked him savagely back, then took a glance at the masses approaching over the fields. He bellowed to his countrymen in Kaleksha.

  They drew together with Sadja and ran.

  MANDHI

  The dawn light was cold and grim, a thin yellow that gave the white stones a color like a dying man’s skin. Mandhi paced on the balcony and watched the sun rise, waiting for the Emperor, her husband, and her clan. Her balcony overlooked the lower city, and long before she heard anything from the heralds she saw the tatters of Sadja’s forces fleeing through the streets with the Devoured on their heels.

  She ran through the cold white halls of the palace shouting. “Open the gate! Open the gate!”

  When she reached the courtyard, her cry was echoed by the watchmen on the walls and the men outside the door. The heavy, bronze-clad gate of the palace was pulled open just enough to let a few men through. They streamed in: harried, panicking soldiers, Amuran and Kaleksha, then Sadja himself, then Kest.

  She ran to her husband without stopping to see what else had happened. His arms were covered in blood, his face splattered with the black putrescent oil of the Devoured’s innards. His cotton cuirass was in tatters. He stumbled as he rushed into the gate, dropping to a knee. Sadja offered him a hand, and Mandhi was beside him a moment later.

  A bellow from beyond the gate. Sadja whirled.

  “Close it!” he commanded.

  Kest tried to rise. “There are still men outside.” As he spoke, a desperate soldier squeezed through the slowly closing door.

  “The Powers remember them—” Sadja began. Then the Devoured burst through.

  With an explosion of speed that Mandhi had never seen from him before, Kest leaped to his feet and charged the door. Several Devoured had already broken through, wielding crude clubs and cudgels, one with nothing but his blood-covered fingernails. One leaped atop Kest’s back, but the Kaleksha giant ignored him. His shoulder slammed into the door and heaved it shut. The bronze-covered bar locked it into place.

  A man swung a club at Mandhi. She screamed and jumped back. Another swing connected with her hip. She howled.

  A sword flashed and tore a gash in the Devoured man. Sadja. The wound would have killed an ordinary man, but the Devoured spun as if barely pricked, splattering Mandhi with the black rot that seeped from the wound. Her skin burned where it touched her.

  She crawled away, her every movement provoking a throb of pain in her bruised hip. The Devoured came at Sadja, who countered with sword strokes. He struck again and again. Aside from knocking the man back, nothing seemed to matter. The man took lethal slashes without blinking. Finally Sadja’s sword struck true and wedged itself between the man’s ribs. The Devoured grinned and lunged forward, his club connecting with Sadja’s head before Sadja could let go of the blade.

  A body thrown across the courtyard hit the Devoured man and knocked him to the ground. Kest rumbled forward.

  He leaped and landed with both feet on top of the downed man, prompting a crackle of breaking bones that Mandhi could hear from yards away. One of the men clawed at Kest’s feet. Kest grabbed the man’s hair, and with a vicious stomp he cracked his neck.

  The body grew limp.

  Kest stood over the two Devoured, his chest heaving, blood dripping down his hands and face. A few feet away, Sadja staggered to his feet, holding his hand to his head. Blood trickled down his chin and dripped from his fingers.

  “Is the gate closed?” he asked.

  “Closed and barred,” Kest answered.

  Sadja looked around. Only four of the Devoured had gotten through the gate before Kest had closed it. Kest had broken the necks of two of them, and the other two were now pinned down beneath teams of Kaleksha. They were, alas, still alive.

  Kest flipped one of the broken Devoured over with his toe. “They aren’t any stronger than regular men,” he said with a hint of pride. “Just awfully hard to kill.”

  And then the man with the broken neck began to speak. Mandhi felt a surge of revulsion. His head sat at a sickening angle on his neck, one ear touching his shoulder. His voice came out rasping and child-like through his twisted windpipe.

  “You still cannot kill us, Sadja-daridarya,” the man said. “The Empress will have you eventually.”

  Sadja strode over and looked down at the man. He kicked the Devoured arm. It hung as limp as a dead fish.

  “Maybe you don’t die to blades,” Sadja said, “but I can still destroy you.”

  “The Empress of the Devoured will have you,” the man repeated. “She sends you her love.”

  Sadja shivered visibly. “If Basadi-daridarya lives, then it will be my honor to deliver her as I’m going to deliver you.” He turned to the men pinning down the last two Devoured. “Break their necks. Make a pyre, and we’ll burn them all.”

  “My Emperor,” shouted one of the men on the palace wall. A rock flew over his shoulder and clattered onto the paving stones of the courtyard. “There are still many more outside.”

  Sadja took a glance at the heavy bronze-clad door of the palace wall. “Are they attacking?”

  The man looked down, then ducked to avoid another missile. “Rocks, as you can see. No arrows. No one is attacking the gate.”

  “Hold position and don’t get hurt,” Sadja said. “Don’t bother firing back. Burn the ones that are here in the palace.”

  Men began to rove through the yard carrying out the Emperor’s orders. A medic rushed to Sadja’s side to see to his bleeding head.

  Mandhi rose cautiously to her feet, her hand on her hip. She tried to straighten. It was just a bruise, after all, but she still winced as she put her hand on the injury. She hobbled over to Kest.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. She touched his arm.

  Kest looked down at her, his face blank of emotion. He looked at his own blood-covered hands and touched his scratched face.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Mandhi, care for your husband’s wounds,” Sadja said. The medic had him lying on his back, dabbing the wounded place with a wet rag. “I owe him my life today.”

  “Come back to the room,” Mandhi said. “Can you walk?”

  “The room?” Kest said. The rage of battle was draining away from him rapidly, and he seemed dazed and listless. He shook his head.

  “I have water and rags there,” Mandhi said. “It’s clean. You have room to rest.”

  “Oh. Very well.” The haze in his eyes cleared a little, and he lay a hand on Mandhi’s shoulder.

  She rested her hand atop his and led him through the palace. He followed her meekly, his breath laboring. His hands were slick with blood and sweat.

  The rooms where Hrenge slept with Aryaji and Jhumitu were across the hall from the room that Mandhi shared with Kest. Aryaji stuck her head out as she heard them approach. Her eyes grew wide.

  “What happened?”

  “Devoured in the courtyard,” Mandhi said. “We’ve destroyed them. We’re safe for now.”

  Aryaji looked at Kest. “And him?”

  “I’m fine,” he rumbled.

  “He’s going to rest,” Mandhi said firmly. “Don’t disturb us.”

  Aryaji nodded and pulled the curtain shut. Mandhi and Kest crossed the hall into their own room, and Mandhi pulled the curtain shut.

  “Kneel,” she said. She set cushions in the center of the room for Kest’s knees.

  Kest knelt. Mandhi moved behind him, undid the ties holding the cuirass in place, and let it drop to the floor. She bent and pulled his torn, bloody kurta over his head. He lifted his arms in mute submission. Then she took the ewer of purified water, soaked a rag, and began to clean him.

  “Mandhi,” he said softly.

  “Yes?” she asked. His shoulders were covered in shallow scratches, probably from the Devo
ured which had climbed up his back as he pushed the gate shut. She daubed them clean of blood, rinsed the rag, and began working down his arms. His skin was flush with exertion, and his breath came heavy and strong.

  “I wasn’t trying to save the Emperor.”

  “Well you did. He owes us one, and I’m not going to let him forget it.” His forearms, likewise were covered in gouges, and the blood that covered them was his own. She gently wiped away the sweat, blood, and grime.

  He reached out and closed his newly cleaned hand over her wrist. He pulled her closer. “I was trying to save you.”

  Her heart began to race. Words suddenly abandoned her. “Oh.”

  She bent and rinsed the rag again, now facing Kest, and began to rinse his other arm. Her blood thrummed, and a long-dormant heat grew in the bottom of her belly. Prayers. Those she could remember. She muttered the prayers of healing and purification as fast as her tongue could move.

  “We may never leave this palace,” Kest said.

  “I’m not sure—” Mandhi began, but Kest cut her off.

  “The city is overrun with Devoured. The gates are lost. A vast army is coming through them now. They pinned us in here, and now they’re just waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?” Mandhi said. The thundering of her heart was so loud, she worried Aryaji would hear it.

  “The Empress, I guess,” Kest said. He shook his head. “But that’s not the point. The point is….”

  He reached out and grabbed her around her thighs. He pulled her close and pressed his forehead against her belly.

  “Kest,” she said. He looked up at her. Stars, he looked like Taleg—but this thought no longer stirred melancholy and resistance in her. Instead, it reminded her of everything she had loved in Taleg. His bravery, his strength, his honesty. His willingness to take great risks when it seemed to him to be right.