Queen Taifa rushed from the main room of her cabin on the ship. Her vizier
had interrupted a meeting with the Ruling Council, ushering her to the
foredeck. Somehow, the savages had gotten around the Chosen's front lines
and the Omehi were under attack.
The news had shaken the Ruling Council. They'd harried Taifa about her
promise of dragons and she'd told them the coterie was nearing the end of
its work. She reminded them she was a queen who kept her promises,
hoping they couldn't tell how worried she was about keeping this one.
So as Taifa hurried after her vizier, she prepared herself. She would do
what she could to win the battle, but she was no fool. If they survived the
day, her council would look to leash her ability to rule. Then the real
tragedy would come.
In all likelihood, the council would order the higher castes back to the
remaining seaworthy ships. They'd try to save themselves by fleeing, by
abandoning the Lessers and leaving her people to their fates.
This, Taifa would not allow. It was not her way, but in a time of war, she
could rule by fiat. She was no tyrant, but a good ruler would not stand by
and watch her people be destroyed. A good ruler would not allow
frightened fools to turn fear into folly.
The council needed leadership, not discussion, not consent, not
compromise. Wasn't that how the military worked under her champion?
Wasn't that how wars were won? Weren't the Chosen at war?
Her thoughts brought Tsiory to mind. She'd need him more than ever if
she defied the Ruling Council. She'd need him, but he hadn't come to her
after her decision to form the coterie.
She didn't want to think his absence a punishment, and she could order
him back, but she wouldn't. Doing so would violate their unspoken rules.
She was his queen, but he was her lover. With him, she wasn't looking for a
subject. She wanted an equal. He couldn't be that in public, but in private
they could blur the lines.
He's too stubborn, she thought, stepping onto the deck of the ship and
wondering how he'd take it if she disbanded the council. He'd have to
accept it, she decided, he'd have—
Queen Taifa Omehia of the Chosen didn't finish the thought. She was
looking at her worst nightmare, made real.
The beach was overrun and her enemy was everywhere. She couldn't
understand how so many of them had gotten past their front lines. She
couldn't—a Chosen man died on the beach, his chest opened up by a
heathen's spear. She looked away from the gruesome scene and saw two
women, two of her people, run down by the natives.
"What happened?" she asked. Her Queen's Guard, her vizier, and her
Ruling Council, trailing her, said nothing.
She heard a war cry and the thunder of hooves. It came from the far side
of one of her broken ships, the ones foraged for wood and resources. From
the ribs of the scavenged vessel pounded a dozen horses ridden by a unit of
Enraged Ingonyama, and her heart stopped.
Tsiory was leading them. Tsiory was enraged.
"No," she said, her voice a whisper.
The Ingonyama smashed into the thickest fighting and cleaved through
their enemies like a machete through grass. Savages scattered and died, but
there were too few Ingonyama and too many savages.
"Gather the Gifted," Queen Taifa told one of her messengers. "I want
Enervators down there. Have them hit as many of the savages as they can.
Bring the KaEid to me. We need the dragons, now."
The messenger, an Edifier, entered a trance and sent out the orders.
"Oh Goddess," moaned Lady Panya as she took in the battle. "We're
undone."
"Panya, you are a member of the Ruling Council," Queen Taifa told the
Royal Noble without taking her eyes from Tsiory. "Carry yourself like one."
She couldn't believe he was doing this to her. Every time he engaged the
enemy she died a little. If he fell…
"Where are the Enervators!" she yelled.
"There, Queen Taifa," Lady Umi said, pointing with one of her longfingered hands, and Taifa saw them.
The Gifted were gathered too close together. Their positioning would
reduce their effectiveness, but they were young, not fully trained. Her
battle-tested Gifted were on the front lines. The same front lines that had
been bypassed.
Taifa watched as the young women tried to spread out. She couldn't hear
the call to attack. They were too far for that, but she felt hope when she saw
their arms snap up with military precision. They might be young and
untested, but it wasn't fair to think them unready.
The wall of protective soldiers surrounding the Gifted flowed to the
sides, leaving the path between the women and their enemy clear. Even
with the distance, Taifa saw the Gifted stiffen as their powers were made
manifest and wave upon wave of shimmering energy sprang from their
fingers to sweep toward the savages.
The heathens raced to the attack, colliding headlong with the enervating
wave. All struck were felled, dropped to their knees, bellies, or backs, and
made helpless. Instantly, the Gifted cut the flow of enervation, allowing
their soldiers to charge and fall on the savages, hacking them apart. Taifa
leaned forward, distaste for her bloodlust warring with gratification as she
watched some of her enemies destroyed.
In the first days after landfall, it had been the Gifted, specifically the
Enervators among them, who had won the beach for the Chosen. The
savages had not seen gifts like enervation or enraging and didn't know how
to fight against them.
It was different now. The enemy soldiers, having been taught many
deadly lessons, were clever students, and one of their leaders split her
fighters into several prongs and rushed her warriors into and among the
Chosen soldiers. The young Enervators were inexperienced, scared. After
their first successful attack, they splashed waves of enervation everywhere,
often hitting their own men.
Chosen soldiers, the ones not immediately overcome by the savages'
numbers or incapacitated by poorly aimed enervation, fought bravely and
died badly. After that, it didn't take long for the savages to reach the Gifted.
The women fled and were run down, their screams carrying across the
sands to Taifa as barely heard cries that still felt loud enough to deafen.
Tsiory wasn't faring much better. Most of the Ingonyama who had
ridden out with him were dead, and more savages spilled from the trees and
onto the beach.
"Call for a surrender," Lady Umi said. "It might not be too late."
"We are Chosen," Taifa told her.
"Is that what they'll call us when we're all dead?"
Without sparing her a glance, Taifa said, "Guards, place Lady Umi
under arrest. Throw her in the ship's prisons."
Two of her guards grabbed the ancient Royal Noble, her eyes wide with
surprise.
"Are you mad?" Umi said, struggling against the iron grips of Taifa's
guard. "Queen Taifa, what is this? Are you so determined to rule over the
end of your people?"
"Remove her," Taifa told the guards, letting her gaze flicker over the
faces of the remaining members of the Ruling Council. The council
members remained impassive, but Taifa could tell her message had been
received.
She returned her attention to the battle, despair ripping through her at a
new threat. Savages had emerged from the tree line riding massive beasts.
The beasts were blue-skinned, tusked, and horned, and they moved about
on six tree-trunk-thick legs.
"What demon-spawn are those?" said Panya, her face filled with fear.
"Don't do it," whispered Taifa to the battlefield, to the Goddess, to
Tsiory. "Please, don't."
Tsiory and his remaining Ingonyama charged.
"Queen Taifa," said the KaEid, leader of Taifa's Gifted. She was out of
breath and accompanied by sixteen other Gifted. They must have run the
entire way. "We're ready."
Taifa wasn't listening. She watched the charge, saw the collision of
horse and horror-beast, Ingonyama and savage. Her nearest soldiers, both
the gray-uniformed Ihashe and the larger black-garbed Indlovu, joined the
fight.
Swords flickered, flesh and bone broke, men died, and their blood
filthied the sands of this alien shore. The few Gifted near the fight, lowlevel Entreaters, did what they could. They grabbed hold of the minds of the
six-legged beasts, turning them against their riders and the other savages.
The creatures bucked their riders, goring and trampling the tattooed
savages. They stampeded, breaking the natives' war formations and giving
Tsiory's Ingonyama brief reprieve. Still, the enemy was too numerous and
Taifa could do nothing but watch as Tsiory fought and fought, until he took
a horrible cut and went down.
"The dragons, my queen," said the KaEid.
"We call to them," Taifa ordered, weak with worry as she flung her soul
to Isihogo, latching onto the KaEid and the rest of her Hex. As one, they
sent out the distress call, and a breath later, she felt the dragons stir and take
flight.
Hurry, she thought to herself. Hurry.
Tsiory was back on his feet. She wished she could see him more clearly.
Hurry. Was that blood on his face?
A savage riding one of the six-legged monsters threw a spear, bone
white and long hafted, at him. He slapped the projectile away and stabbed
the monster in its foremost leg. It reared and threw its rider. Behind Tsiory,
a savage stabbed for his spine. Taifa screamed, close to coming undone, but
an Ingonyama protecting Tsiory knocked the attack wide and chopped the
offender in half.
Hurry. In her mind, Taifa could feel wings beating through the thick and
hot air. She could feel the dragon's blazing anger, its worry, its bitter hate.
Hurry.
In Isihogo, where half her mind was, she saw the dim glow of a
shrouded soul. It was not one of her Gifted. It was a savage, drawing energy
to bring to bear on the battlefield. Using her real body, her real eyes, Taifa
searched and found him. He was just inside the tree line, not far from where
Tsiory fought. The heathen aimed his hands at the battle and the savages
doubled in number.
Seeing this, one of Taifa's guards, breaching protocol, shouted in
surprise. Taifa couldn't blame him. She'd never seen such a powerful gift. It
had created new life, new warriors to fight for her enemies. The battle was
lost. They could not win.
"There!" It was the same guard. Taifa looked where he pointed. One of
the Enraged Ingonyama was slashing at the savages around him, his sword
tearing through the hordes like they were nothing but air.
Taifa closed her eyes, blocking out the things her senses told her, so she
could see with her soul. The Gifted savage was there, in Isihogo. He was
pulling incredible amounts of energy and his shroud was about to collapse,
but she couldn't wait for that.
It would have been impossible for any in her Hex, for any of her Gifted,
but Taifa was of royal blood and it was not impossible for her. She split her
mind in three, one-third watching the battle, one-third calling to the dragon,
and the last third she used to attack the savage.
She drew more energy into herself and took aim. Across the distance,
through Isihogo's mists, she fired. Her bolt burned a path through the
underworld's fog like a comet across the night sky. It struck the heathen
and, before he could react, expelled him from Isihogo, his link to the
energies there broken.
Taifa heard shouts and gasps around her. She opened her eyes. The
illusions of women and men that the Gifted savage had created were gone,
but the enemies that remained, the ones of real flesh and blood, were still
too many.
On the sands, Tsiory yelled something to his men. He was calling a
retreat before they could be surrounded. If they could get to the ships, they
might be able to reorganize.
A group of savages attacked. Tsiory fought them off, still yelling orders.
He was hit once, twice, a few more times, and then he did something Taifa
would not forgive for the rest of her days. He severed his connection to his
Gifted and lost the enraging.
Taifa knew he did this to save the Gifted. She had seen him take blow
after blow. She knew the amounts of energy the Gifted would have needed
to pull from Isihogo to keep Tsiory safe. She knew he'd saved his Gifted's
life by cutting the connection, and she didn't care.
Tsiory took a spear through the back. Taifa screamed as it went in and
was still screaming when the head of the spear burst through his chest and
leather armor. Taifa saw the look of surprise on her lover's face and saw it
turn to pain, his mouth open, gasping for air that his torn lungs could no
longer breathe.
The spear was ripped free, and he looked—she swore he looked right to
her. Then she watched him fall, fall onto this cursed land's unnaturally
white sand. There to stay, there to die.
Dimly, Taifa knew she had not stopped screaming, but that part of her
felt far away when compared to the overwhelming presence of the dragon
that had come into her range. She merged with it.