Forged In Flame (In Her Name: The First Empress, Book 2) (23 page)

“Do not kick hard,” Dara-Kol counseled. “Do not exhaust yourself. Slow and steady, and we may be able to move it enough to get to water shallow enough to stand.”

“And if we cannot?” Han-Ukha’i’s feet were churning the water, and Keel-Tath wondered how long it would be before she was utterly exhausted.

“Do any of you know how to swim?”

The others shook their heads. 

“Then we had best kick harder.”

***

“We are not getting any closer to shore.” Keel-Tath spoke in a whisper, hoping that only Dara-Kol could hear. They had been in the water for what seemed like hours, but she knew it had not been so long. But the river was carrying them to the sea much faster than they were pushing the
genoth’s
dead weight closer to shore. 

“We are, but not fast enough.” 

Drakh-Nur, who was not faring so well after the stab wound in his side reopened, gasped. “Something brushed by my leg!”

That set everyone on edge. The big warrior began to claw his way back onto the
genoth
, and Han-Ukha’i made to follow suit.

“No!” Dara-Kol told them. “We cannot stay here. The corpse will draw the fish. We have to reach shore.”

“But how?” Drakh-Nur was angry and not a little bit afraid. 

“We must swim.” Dara-Kol let go of the
genoth
and drifted free, keeping herself afloat with graceful sweeps of her arms through the water while kicking with her legs. Before the others could protest, she went on, “I know you have not been taught. Be calm. Let me find out where we can make a landing.”

With that, she swam around their makeshift raft toward the shore. Every once in a while she dove under, then resurfaced. Finally, perhaps twenty or thirty arm lengths from the raft, she turned to face them. “You can stand on the bottom here! Then we can wade ashore.”

Keel-Tath saw that there was still quite some distance to cover to reach the trees from where Dara-Kol was standing, but she realized that the shore was actually part of a very gently sloped hill. The river was so high that the normal river bank was probably somewhere farther away from them, out closer to the center of the river. 

Dara-Kol swam back. 

“When did you learn to swim?” Keel-Tath asked her.

“When I was a child. It was a skill I used to help your father once. Remind me one day and I will tell you about it. But now you must trust me and do as I say.” 

Keel-Tath nodded.

“Let go of the
genoth
, then hold your arms by your side and kick your legs.”

Taking a deep breath, expecting to drown, Keel-Tath did as she was told. Her heart was pounding as she let go the dead beast, surrendering herself to the water.

In a deft movement, Dara-Kol came up behind and wrapped one arm over Keel-Tath’s chest. Leaning her back in the water, she said, “Just relax and kick. I will keep your head above water.”

Keel-Tath clenched her fists, forcing herself to keep them at her sides. She was gasping for air, expecting water to come splashing down her windpipe, and the queer sensation of it in her ears, muffling the outside world, was unsettling.

But after a few minutes, Dara-Kol told her, “Here. Stop kicking and stand.”

Keel-Tath relaxed her legs and forced herself upright as Dara-Kol released her. Much to her surprise, her feet touched bottom, leaving her head above water.

Dara-Kol repeated the process with Han-Ukha’i, who displayed warrior-like courage in obeying Dara-Kol’s commands.

But by the time she returned for Drakh-Nur, the situation had changed. The
genoth
had floated much farther downstream. Keel-Tath and Han-Ukha’i, having moved to shallower water, were trying to keep up with it while Dara-Kol, who was nearing the point of exhaustion, again swam out.

What was more frightening was that there was clear evidence that, despite the muddy water, fish were coming upstream to gorge themselves on the feast of dead things the storm was washing out to sea. Other bodies, including a few of their own kind, floated not far ahead of the
genoth
to which Drakh-Nur still clung, and Keel-Tath could see them jerk and spasm as fish tore away chunks of flesh. Around one, something as large as a warrior but in the shape of a lizard, the water began to roil as the fish went into a frenzy, and in mere seconds it had disappeared in a bloody froth.

When Dara-Kol reached him, Drakh-Nur stolidly refused to let go. 

Keel-Tath cupped her hands to her mouth. “Drakh-Nur! You must let go and do as Dara-Kol says! This I command of you!”

He looked at her, and with a sick expression on his face released his hold on the dead beast. Dara-Kol wrapped her arm around him, but it was clear she was struggling. Drakh-Nur was so large and she was so tired, Keel-Tath feared they both might drown.

“Can you not control the water, mistress?” Han-Ukha’i asked hopefully. “Part it for them, that they may walk on the bottom?”

“I will try.” Keel-Tath sank deeper into the water, and tried to summon up the power she had used in the crypt what seemed a lifetime ago. She felt a tingling running through her core, a flare of power, and waves broke away from her, as if she was a rock that had been thrown into the river. She visualized her two struggling companions walking on the bottom, the water parted to either side…

Nothing else happened. 

With a growl of frustration, she opened her eyes. “I can feel the power, but I cannot control it!” 

With a gurgling cry, Dara-Kol went under, and Drakh-Nur with her. Their hands splashed and slapped at the water.

Before she realized what she was doing, Keel-Tath was charging toward them. She heard Han-Ukha’i behind her, shouting at her to come back, but she ignored her. 

Too many have died on my account, Keel-Tath thought bitterly. I will not let these two die in my name.

With another step, the bottom dropped away, and her head plunged below the water. She flailed her arms and kicked desperately with her legs. Much to her surprise, she stayed afloat. More than that, she was moving toward her two struggling companions. She quickly found that if she kicked her legs to move herself forward, she could keep her body level and head above water by reaching out with her arms, then sweeping downward. It was an awkward stroke, not nearly as graceful or powerful as that used by Dara-Kol, but it worked. 

She knew she did not have the strength or skill to pull Drakh-Nur as Dara-Kol had, but she might be able to help him stay above water and breathe.

As she reached them, she held her breath and dropped down to the bottom, which was half an arm’s length over her head. Grabbing Drakh-Nur around his legs, which were barely kicking now, she lifted him enough that his head broke the surface. 

That gave Dara-Kol a chance to disengage from Drakh-Nur and recover her own breath.

Just as Keel-Tath’s lungs were about to give out, Dara-Kol tapped her on the shoulder, then fastened her arm around Drakh-Nur again. Keel-Tath gave him a push to help get him started, then she shot to the surface. Gulping in air, she used her ungainly stroke to paddle after them to where Han-Ukha’i waited in waist-deep water.

Behind them, the body of the
genoth
began to shudder as fish, and then larger things that normally fed on the fish, began to tear into the spoiling flesh.

It took all three females to get Drakh-Nur to the shore. He was unconscious as they finally dragged him up the sandy bank and into the trees. Han-Ukha’i hissed as she pulled away the black fabric from around his wound. It had not only reopened and was bleeding badly, but had become infected, the flesh swollen and discolored. Keel-Tath wrinkled her nose at the smell, a sweet sickly odor that masked the unaccustomed but pleasant smell of the sea.

Drawing the symbiont from her arm, Han-Ukha’i placed the entire mass on the wound. It was much smaller than it had been, a reflection of the healer’s exhaustion and hunger. The yellow and purple gel pulsed and quivered as it sank into the big warrior’s body.

Keel-Tath knelt beside Drakh-Nur and took his hand. Looking at her other two companions, she gave a tired but victorious smile. “We are alive. We have made it through the Great Wastelands to the Western Sea!”

Dara-Kol nodded, but did not smile. “We have far yet to go, mistress. We are alive, yes, but that is the best we can say for now. Anyone who finds us will take us for honorless ones, for we have literally nothing but our undergarments and our weapons. Then we must find a ship and a crew willing to take us to Ku’ar-Amir.”

“And there will be no mistaking who you are with your hair and talons,” Han-Ukha’i added quietly. “Even if we have left Shil-Wular behind us, the lands along the coast are beholden to the queen.”

That was not the reaction Keel-Tath had expected. She knew all those things, but she refused to let them dispirit her. They had eluded Shil-Wular, survived a traitor in their midst, and crossed the Great Wastelands to reach the Western Sea, a feat of which few beyond the Ka’i-Nur could boast. They should be jubilant, rejoicing in the miracle of their survival. “It is better than being dead.”

“And that is exactly what you will be if you are not silent.”

Dara-Kol and Keel-Tath shot to their feet and drew their swords, whirling around to face the two dozen warriors who had emerged from the trees behind them.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

On The Beach

“Sheathe your swords,” the warrior, a female about the same age as Dara-Kol, said. “We have not bared our blades.”

Keel-Tath exchanged a glance with Dara-Kol. It was true. The warriors who now surrounded them had not drawn their weapons. 

“Who are you?” Dara-Kol challenged. “And what business do you have with us?”

“I am Wan-Kuta’i, sent by my mistress Li’an-Salir to bear you home to Ku’ar-Amir.”

Keel-Tath stood for a moment, staring at her in stupefied silence before she said, “Li’an-Salir sent you? But how could she know we were here?”

“She did not, young mistress. We were told only that you were heading west, and that every effort must be made to find you. Many ships with warriors were sent to keep watch in the ports that border the Great Wastelands, and the two major rivers that flow from there to the Western Sea.” She frowned. “We were just about to set sail for home when the last of my scouts,” she nodded to a pair of young male warriors standing on either side of her, “spotted you coming down the river.”

Keel-Tath was surprised to see that the two scouts must have been young, close to her own age, but stood with the self-confidence of fully blooded warriors. Both were tall, standing half a head above even Dara-Kol. One was broad in the chest with powerful arms, wearing a sword at his side that was as long as her father’s. His face was made up of planes and angles, as if crafted to be an extension of the armor he wore, and a downturned mouth that seemed set in a perpetual frown. He looked at her with what she took for mild disdain, no doubt at the bedraggled condition in which she found herself. 

Annoyed, she turned her attention to the other scout, who was of a much more graceful build, with a sword to match. Without his armor, she would never have taken him for a warrior, but she knew that to judge him so would have been a terrible mistake. She could see in his silver-flecked eyes the look of a predator, and her hand reflexively tightened on the handle of her sword. His face was fair to behold, far more attractive than the other scout, and she felt a curious sense of warmth course through her as she looked at him. He held her gaze steadily, and did not look away.

“Why were you planning to leave?” Dara-Kol asked as she sheathed her sword, and the others followed her lead. 

“You have not heard?”

Dara-Kol and Keel-Tath, who reluctantly broke her gaze from the young scout, both shook their heads. “We have been traveling through the wastelands,” Dara-Kol said with more than a hint of irony in her voice. “The only thing we have heard has been the cries of the beasts in the night.”

“Of course,” Wan-Kuta’i bowed her head, “forgive me. We have been ordered to depart because Syr-Nagath has vanquished Uhr-Gol. It is only a matter of time, a very brief time, I suspect, before she launches an invasion of Ural-Murir. All who proclaim their allegiance to any of the kingdoms there are returning home, and I suspect we are among the last to remain on these shores.” She gestured to where Drakh-Nur lay, still tended by Han-Ukha’i, who had barely looked up during the exchange. Four warriors went to him and gently lifted him on their shoulders. “We dare not tarry here any longer. The queen’s warriors are everywhere, searching for you, and I do not doubt they are watching the rivers, as well. Come, let us go.”

“Will we not stand out like this?” Keel-Tath asked as she followed Wan-Kuta’i, with Dara-Kol at her side. The two scouts fell into step behind them. She could sense that Dara-Kol did not entirely trust the strangers, but what choice did they have but to go along with them? “We have no armor...”

“You will not need it where we are going, and there is no time now. If we are seen, it will not protect you.” Wan-Kuta’i glanced at Keel-Tath’s white hair. “Nothing will.” She gestured at the two scouts. “While I have more seasoned warriors, these two are my best swords, with orders to protect you with their lives.”

“I am Ka’i-Lohr,” said the lithe, handsome one, bowing his head. She returned the gesture, unable to restrain a slight smile.

The larger one barely glanced at Keel-Tath as he uttered his name. “Tara-Khan.” He did not bother bowing his head in respect. His attention was fixed on the trees and their surroundings, his eyes looking everywhere but at her.

Forcing down a sudden spike of anger, she said nothing as they made their way along the shore of the river in the direction of the sea. She had many questions to ask, not least among them just where they were going. But Wan-Kuta’i was grim-faced and quiet, her hand on her sword every step of the way, and so Keel-Tath held her silence.

The warriors ahead of them froze, then slowly dropped to a prone position on the ground. The others followed suit, and Keel-Tath and her companions did the same.