The Godspeaker Trilogy (219 page)

She screamed, the demons were killing her warhost. “ More blood, Vortka ! The god wants more blood!”

The slaves who had taught her warriors to sail these warships had taught them the way of spreading messages to many ships. In Jatharuj she had learned of paper, and ink, and quills for writing. She liked them better than clay and stylus, so neat and so clean. But only she and Vortka had used these new wonders.

Vortka used them now. Two of his godspeakers sheltered him with a blanket. He wrote on paper, wrapped the message round a smooth stone, and a warrior fired the stone in a slingshot from their warship to the next. The godspeakers on that warship read the note and passed it on. One by one, the godspeakers on the warships not destroyed by her enemy, or too scattered for the slingshot, learned the god's want.

And then those godspeakers were sacrificing for the god. Still, still, the blood was not enough.

Hekat looked at Vortka. “Go below to the horses. Give their blood to the god.”

“The horses?” said Dmitrak. “Empress—”

She held up her hand to him. “There are horses in Ethrea, they will be ours.”

Mijak's horses were not bred for sacrifice, she stood above them on the deck of her warship and heard them die unwilling for the god. When Vortka and his godspeakers returned, they were red with horses' blood.

She felt the demons screaming, she felt their pain in her blood. She felt their evil weaken, they were not beaten yet. Almost she wept. Had the warhost's horses died for nothing ? Was their blood spilled in vain?

“It is not enough,” said Vortka, as the warship tossed and plunged. “Hekat, we cannot kill every horse in the warhost.”

Around her neck, her scorpion amulet burned. It burned with an answer. The god needed more power, she knew where it was.

“These demons are mighty, Vortka,” she shouted over the wind. “I will kill them with stronger blood.”

Vortka stared. “What do you mean?”

Aieee, the god see her. He would not accept it, even now. “You know what I mean, Vortka.”

He stepped back, unsteady, as the demon wind and water threatened to tear them spar from spar. “We have brought no slaves, Hekat, we have no stronger blood!”

She looked around the warship, at her beautiful warriors. “Vortka, you are foolish. We have the strongest blood of all.”

Dmitrak was listening, Dmitrak leapt towards her. “No. No, I will not allow it! You will not—”

Her snakeblade leapt to her hand, its point pricked his throat. “I am the empress, will you tell me no ? I do not think so, Dmitrak. I think you will step back, before the god strikes you down.”

His eyes were anguished and frightened. Nagarak's eyes, in the moment of his death.

“Please, Hekat,” he said. “Your warlord needs his knife-dancers.”

She pushed him away from her. “ The god needs them more! ”

The warrior nearest to her was young and beautiful, he was named Didalai, no warrior knife-danced like him.

“Didalai!” said Hekat. “Do you serve your empress? Do you serve the god?”

“Hekat, I serve,” said Didalai.

Hekat cut her warrior's beautiful throat. The strong blood pumped from the wound in his neck, Didalai fell to the deck and washed it with his strong blood.

The next warrior was Anik, he was young, too. “Anik, do you serve your empress? Anik, do you serve the god?”

Anik's eyes were wide but they were not frightened. “Hekat, I serve,” he said, and died where he stood.

She felt the god's power rising, she heard the demons howl in fear. She felt them rally against her, she did not care. Strong blood would kill them.

One by one her warriors fell. One by one they served Hekat and the god. At last there were no warriors left to serve. And as the last warrior died…she felt the demons' power fade…felt the wind falter to nothing…felt the god, exultant.

“ Dmitrak !” she shouted.

Dmitrak was weeping, he wept for his warriors, he was a weak fool. Warriors lived so they could die.

“Empress,” he said, choking, stumbling to her side.

She took his face between her hands, she pressed her fingernails into his flesh. Her godbells sang with anger as the angry waves tossed her warship beneath the sky.

“You are the warlord, Dmitrak, you are the god's hammer! The demons are weakened. Smite these enemy warships for the god. Smite them to splinters, destroy them in my eye!”

Still weeping, he nodded, he pressed his fist to his chest. “Empress, I will smite them.” Tears rolled down his face.

She released him, she stepped back, she joined Vortka by her warship's mast.

Aieee, tcha, I miss Zandakar. My true son would not weep.

The witch-men of Tzhung-tzhungchai were screaming. On the Ilda , on Han's flagship, on every surviving ship in the armada. Eyes closed, mouths stretched wide, the flesh of their faces compressed against their skulls, they screamed and they screamed…with no whisper of sound.

And the wind died. The waterspouts collapsed. The needle-nosed ships of Dev'karesh were stranded in the open. Zandakar's brother killed them with his gauntlet, like an idle boy stoning chickens in a coop.

“ Chalava! Chalava! Chalava zho !” chanted the warriors of Mijak.

“The witch-men are defeated!” cried Ludo. He was weeping. “God help us, we're lost.”

Almost, almost, Alasdair surrendered to despair. Unchecked now, with Han's witch-men failing, Dmitrak's gauntlet cut a swathe through the armada. Boats burned and sank and flew to splinters all around them. In a matter of minutes, surely, they'd be struck or fire would reach them. They would die at the hands of Zandakar's brother.

Rhian. Rhian.

They had to flee, every survivor, while they still could. Dying here in a hopeless attack would condemn Ethrea and the rest of the world to the same kind of slaughter.

“Chalava! Chalava! Chalava zho!”

Half-jumping, half-falling, abandoning Ludo, Alasdair tumbled from the Ilda's cabin roof. His bones sang with pain as his feet struck the deck. He ran to the bow, to the silent, stricken witch-men. He took the first one by the shoulders and tried to shake him to awareness. Nothing. The witch-man's eyes were open, but he couldn't seem to see.

Alasdair struck him hard across the face. “Wake up! Wake up! Ethrea needs you!”

But the witch-man didn't feel the blows. His open eyes remained glazed and unseeing.

All around them the armada's ships were dying. Han's flagship wallowed without direction. Han stood with his witch-men, blank-faced and silent.

Captain Yanson staggered to the bow. “Your Majesty, we can't stay here! We've got to go! We've got to—”

A Slyntian warship's burning mast crashed across them, smashed by Dmitrak's merciless gauntlet. Every man standing was thrown from his feet, and fire leapt like a lover along the Ilda's sweet lines.

“Ludo!” Alasdair shouted, lurching to his knees and looking for his cousin.

“I'm fine,” said Ludo, joining him, blood streaming down his face and one arm. “We're done for. Can we abandon ship?”

“I don't know! Yanson—”

But Captain Yanson was dead, his head split like a melon from striking the railing. Blood and brains smeared the deck. One of the witch-men was dead too, his neck broken. And the Ilda was well alight, tangled in the wreckage of the Slyntian ship. Smoke billowed, flames crackled. The air was full of screams.

“Han's flagship,” said Alasdair, staring at it. “It's tangled too, but not as badly and it's not on fire. If we can use the Slyntian ship as a bridge—”

“God save us, are you mad?” said Ludo.

“Would you rather stay here and burn alive?”

Ludo's face was his answer.

“The other two witch-men live, I think,” he said. “You carry one. I'll carry the other. We can't leave them. We need them. They're not dead, they're just – stunned.”

“And the Ilda's crew?”

Alasdair closed his eyes. God forgive me . “They'll have to take their chances, Ludo.”

Escaping the Ilda was a nightmare. Burning, listing, she tried to kill them in her death throes. Pushing Ludo before him, his witch-man slung across his shoulders, muscles shrieking, lungs gasping, Alasdair kept his eyes on Han's flagship and blotted out everything else: the smoke, the flames, the screams of the injured and dying, the reek of burning blood and flesh, the stink of charred timber and canvas, the chanting of Mijak's encroaching warriors.

“Chalava! Chalava! Chalava zho!”

He and Ludo reached the sinking Slyntian ship and, without a backwards glance, left the Ilda behind. Burdened with Han's witch-men, they helped each other struggle through the tangle of spars and rigging and dead mutilated sailors. Halfway between the two ships, Ludo's witch-man slipped from his sweaty, bloody grip and plunged into the churning water below.

Between them they saved the second witch-man, barely. And barely reached Han's flagship alive as flames roared on the Slyntian ship and swallowed the Ilda .

“ Han !” Alasdair shouted. “Han, can you hear me?”

No reply. Han and his witch-men stood like statues carved from obsidian and amber. Leaving Ludo to care for their rescued witch-man, Alasdair staggered towards them as Ethrea's armada burned and died.

Reckless, desperate, he snatched at Tzhung's emperor, desperate to shake Han back to his senses. But the moment his fingers closed on Han's rigid arm, a bolt of power surged through him. Nerves on fire, ears ringing, he flew through the air and struck the boat's railing. The impact flipped him over the side. He had enough wits left to grab hold, to hang on. The pain was so vicious, he thought his wrists would snap.

“ Alasdair !” Ludo shouted.

As Ludo scrambled to reach him, his face bloodless with terror, Alasdair looked up at Han. Tzhung's emperor was stirring, the vacant look fading from his eyes. The witch-men standing with him were stirring, too.

“Alasdair!” said Ludo, reaching him. “Rollin's mercy, are you insane ?”

Bumping, bruising, scraping bare flesh and collecting splinters, Ludo hauled him back over the side of Han's flagship. Around them the armada's destruction continued. Both the Ilda and the Slyntian ship had burned to the waterline, and they were only two of many.

Coughing, panting his thanks, Alasdair squeezed Ludo's shoulder then turned back to Han. This time he didn't touch him.

“Emperor, can you hear me? Can you understand?”

Slowly, painfully, Han nodded. “Yes.”

“The armada's defeated,” he said, his voice breaking. Rhian, we failed you. I failed you . “Can you get us back to Ethrea, or at least away from here?”

Instead of answering, Han reached for his witch-men. Embraced them, weeping. Then he released them and raised his head.

“Ethrea,” he said. His voice sounded faint, as though it travelled a great distance. His fingers lifted to touch his face, as though flesh were something unknown, and frightening.

Around him, his ten witch-men did the same.

Slowly Han swept his gaze across the battered, tattered handful of ships still left in the armada. Looked at the ocean, choked with bodies and bits of burned, blasted boat. Stared at the Mijaki warships poised to engulf them.

Blown on the breeze, that menacing chant. “ Chalava! Chalava! Chalava zho! ”

Han's eyes closed. His fisted hands stretched high above his head. His witch-men echoed him. Alasdair stared at the armada's surviving ships, and through the gusting palls of smoke and flickering flames thought he saw other witch-men on boats not yet ruined, slowly raising their fisted hands.

“Oh, please God,” Ludo muttered. “Have mercy. Get us home .”

Nothing…nothing…

Then the tinkling of windchimes…and the world disappeared.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

E
very morning after dancing her hotas , Rhian stood in her privy garden overlooking the harbour and stared out to the horizon, heart thudding, praying for the armada's safe return. Every evening, before the last of the light was lost, she stood there again, heart thudding, before riding with Helfred to Kingseat's great chapel, where she prayed with her people for a victory against Mijak.

For all the hours in between, one of Idson's soldiers stood there, gaze fixed on the horizon, waiting…waiting…

The grass where they stood was worn bare, and might never grow back.

After nearly three weeks had passed, Rhian cornered Dexterity in the castle library, where he was hunting for new books he could give Zandakar to read.

“Mister Jones!” she said, closing the library doors behind her.

Startled, he banged his head on a bookshelf. “Ow. Your Majesty? Has there been—”

“No,” she said, and tried to ignore the pain under her ribs. “No sighting yet. Dexterity—”

Her toymaker sighed and slumped into the nearest overstuffed leather armchair. “I'm sorry. I've tried, I really have. Hettie won't answer me, no matter how hard I beg.”

Rhian sat in the chair opposite, disappointment cruel as a canker. “Helfred says we must have faith. He says, how is it faith when the outcome is already known?” She chewed at her lip, using pain to drive back the tears. “You've no idea how much I long to smack him.”

“Well, he's the prolate,” said Dexterity. “He's got to say things like that, I suppose.” He sat back and considered her, a frown in his eyes. “Your face has healed well.”

Her fingers came up to touch the scars on her cheeks. Ridged, unattractive, they still gave her pause when she looked in a mirror. Dinsy was forever moping, bewailing her queen's lost looks. “Yes. Thanks to Ursa.” She dropped her hands to her lap. “Though you still wish I'd slashed my arms instead, don't you?”

He pulled a face. “Well…”

“Arms can be covered, Dexterity, as though an oath has been set aside. This way, every time an ambassador looks at me he's reminded of my pledge to his people.”

Dexterity smiled. “You're still beautiful.”

“Tcha! As if that matters!”

But of course it did matter, in some small vain part of her soul. Does it matter to Alasdair? I never asked, before he left. I must ask him when he comes home. I must tell him how I love him .

“You've done well with Zandakar,” she added. “His Ethrean's almost perfect now.”