The Rage of Dragons

CHAMPION TSIORY

Tsiory stared at the incomplete maps laid out on the command tent’s only table. He tried to stand tall, wanting to project an image of strength for the military leaders with him, but he swayed slightly, a blade of grass in an imperceptible breeze. He needed rest and was unlikely to get it.

It’d been three days since he’d last gone to the ships to see Taifa. He didn’t want to think he was punishing her. He told himself he had to be here, where the fighting was thickest. She wanted him to hold the beach and push into the territory beyond it, and that was what he was doing.

The last of the twenty-five hundred ships had arrived, and every woman, man, and child who was left of the Chosen was now on this hostile land. Most of the ships had been scavenged for resources, broken to pieces, so the Omehi could survive. There would be no retreat. Losing against the savages would mean the end of his people, and that Tsiory could not permit.

The last few days had been filled with fighting, but his soldiers had beaten back the natives. More than that, Tsiory had taken the beach, pushed into the tree line, and marched the bulk of his army deeper into the peninsula. He couldn’t hold the ground he’d taken, but he’d given her time. He’d done as his queen had asked.

Still, he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t angry with her. He loved Taifa, the Goddess knew he did, but she was playing a suicidal game. Capturing the peninsula with dragons wouldn’t mean much if they brought the Cull down on themselves.

“Champion!” An Indlovu soldier entered the command tent, taking Tsiory from his thoughts. “Major Ojore is being overrun. He’s asking for reinforcements.”

“Tell him to hold.” Tsiory knew the young soldier wanted to say more. He didn’t give him the chance. “Tell Major Ojore to hold.”

“Yes, Champion!”

Harun spat some of the calla leaf he was always chewing. “He can’t hold,” the colonel told Tsiory and the rest of the assembled Guardian Council. The men were huddled in their makeshift tent beyond the beach. They were off the hot sands and sheltered by the desiccated trees that bordered them. “He’s out of arrows. It’s all that kept the savages off him, and Goddess knows, the wood in this forsaken land is too brittle to make more.”

Tsiory looked over his shoulder at the barrel-chested colonel. Harun was standing close enough for him to smell the man’s sour breath. Returning his attention to the hand-drawn maps their scouts had made of the peninsula, Tsiory shook his head. “There are no reinforcements.”

“You’re condemning Ojore and his fighters to death.”

Tsiory waited, and, as expected, Colonel Dayo Okello chimed in. “Harun is right. Ojore will fall and our flank will collapse. You need to speak with the queen. Make her see sense. We’re outnumbered and the savages have gifts we’ve never encountered before. We can’t win.”

“We don’t need to,” Tsiory said. “We just need to give her time.”

“How long? How long until we have the dragons?” Tahir asked, pacing. He didn’t look like the man Tsiory remembered from home. Tahir Oni came from one of the Chosen’s wealthiest families and was renowned for his intelligence and precision. He was a man who took intense pride in his appearance.

Back on Osonte, every time Tsiory had seen Tahir, the man’s head was freshly shaved, his dark skin oiled to a sheen, and his colonel’s uniform sculpted to his muscular frame. The man before him now was a stranger to that memory.

Tahir’s head was stubbly, his skin dry, and his uniform hung off a wasted body. Worse, it was difficult for Tsiory to keep his eyes from the stump of Tahir’s right arm, which was bleeding through its bandages.

Tsiory needed to calm these men. He was their leader, their inkokeli, and they needed to believe in their mission and queen. He caught Tahir’s attention, tried to hold it and speak confidently, but the soldier’s eyes twitched like a prey animal’s.

“The savages won’t last against dragons,” Tsiory said. “We’ll break them. Once we have firm footing, we can defend the whole of the valley and peninsula indefinitely.”

“Your lips to the Goddess’s ears, Tsiory,” Tahir muttered, without using either of his honorifics.

“Escaping the Cull,” Dayo said, echoing Tsiory’s unvoiced thoughts, “won’t mean anything if we all die here. I say we go back to the ships and find somewhere a little less… occupied.”

“What ships, Dayo? There aren’t enough for all of us, and we don’t have the resources to travel farther. We’re lucky the dragons led us here,” Tsiory said. “It was a gamble, hoping they’d find land before we starved. Even if we could take to the water again, without them leading us, we’d have no hope.”

Harun waved his arms at their surroundings. “Does this look like hope to you, Tsiory?”

“You’d rather die on the water?”

“I’d rather not die at all.”

Tsiory knew where the conversation would head next, and it would be close to treason. These were hard men, good men, but the voyage had made them as brittle as this strange land’s wood. He tried to find the words to calm them, when the shouting outside their tent began.

“What in the Goddess’s name—” said Harun, opening the tent’s flap and looking out. He couldn’t have seen the hatchet that took his life. It happened too fast.

Tahir cursed, scrambling back as Harun’s severed head fell to the ground at his feet.

“Swords out!” Tsiory said, drawing his weapon and slicing a cut through the rear of the tent to avoid the brunt of whatever was out front.

Tsiory was first through the new exit, blinking under the sun’s blinding light, and all around him was chaos. Somehow, impossibly, a massive force of savages had made their way past the distant front lines, and his lightly defended command camp was under assault.

He had just enough time to absorb this when a savage, spear in hand, leapt for him. Tsiory, inkokeli of the Omehi military and champion to Queen Taifa, slipped to the side of the man’s downward thrust and swung hard for his neck. His blade bit deep and the man fell, his life’s blood spilling onto the white sands.

He turned to his colonels. “Back to the ships!”

It was the only choice. The majority of their soldiers were on the front lines, far beyond the trees, but the enemy was between Tsiory and his army. Back on the beach, camped in the shadows of their scavenged ships, there were fighters and Gifted, held in reserve to protect the Omehi people. Tsiory, the colonels, the men assigned to the command camp, they had to get back there if they hoped to survive and repel the ambush.

Tsiory cursed himself for a fool. His colonels had wanted the command tent pitched inside the tree line, to shelter the leadership from the punishing sun, and though it didn’t feel right, he’d been unable to make any arguments against the decision. The tree line ended well back from the front lines, and he’d believed they had enough soldiers to ensure they were protected. He was wrong.

“Run!” Tsiory shouted, pulling Tahir along.

They made it three steps before their escape was blocked by another savage. Tahir fumbled for his sword, forgetting for a moment that he’d lost his fighting hand. He called out for help and reached for his blade with his left. His fingers hadn’t even touched the sword’s hilt when the savage cut him down.

Tsiory lunged at the half-naked aggressor, blade out in front, skewering the tattooed man who’d killed Tahir. He stepped back from the impaled savage, seeking to shake him off the sword, but the heathen, blood bubbling in his mouth, tried to stab him with a dagger made of bone.

Tsiory’s bronze-plated leathers turned the blow and he grabbed the man’s wrist, breaking it across his knee. The dagger fell to the sand and Tsiory crashed his forehead into his opponent’s nose, snapping the man’s head back. With his enemy stunned, Tsiory shoved all his weight forward, forcing the rest of his sword into the man’s guts, drawing an open-mouthed howl from him that spattered Tsiory with blood and phlegm.

He yanked his weapon away, pulling it clear of the dying native, and swung round to rally his men. He saw Dayo fighting off five savages with the help of a soldier and ran toward them as more of the enemy emerged from the trees.

They were outnumbered, badly, and they’d all die if they didn’t disengage. He kept running but couldn’t get to his colonel before Dayo took the point of a long-hafted spear to the side and went down. The closest soldier killed the native who had dealt the blow, and Tsiory, running full tilt, slammed into two others, sending them to the ground.

On top of them, he pulled his dagger from his belt and rammed it into the closest man’s eye. The other one, struggling beneath him, reached for a trapped weapon, but Tsiory shoved his sword hilt against the man’s throat, using his weight to press it down. He heard the bones in the man’s neck crack, and the savage went still.

Tsiory got to his feet and grabbed Dayo, “Go!”

Dayo, bleeding everywhere, went.

“Back to the beach!” Tsiory ordered the soldiers near him. “Back to the ships!”

Tsiory ran with his men, looking back to see how they’d been undone. The savages were using gifts to mask themselves in broad daylight. As he ran, he saw more and more of them stepping out of what his eyes told him were empty spaces among the trees. The trick had allowed them to move an attacking force past the front lines and right up to Tsiory’s command tent.

Tsiory forced himself to move faster. He had to get to the reserves and order a defensive posture. His heart hammered in his chest and it wasn’t from running. If the savages had a large enough force, this surprise attack could kill everyone. They’d still have the front-line army, but the women, men, and children they were meant to protect would be dead.

Tsiory heard galloping. It was an Ingonyama, riding double with his Gifted, on one of the few horses put on the ships when they fled Osonte. The Ingonyama spotted Tsiory and rode for him.

“Champion,” the man said, dismounting with his Gifted. “Take the horse. I will allow the others to escape.”

Tsiory mounted, saluted before galloping away, and looked back. The Gifted, a young woman, little more than a girl, closed her eyes and focused, and the Ingonyama began to change, slowly at first, but with increasing speed.

The warrior grew taller. His skin, deep black, darkened further, and, moving like a million worms writhing beneath his flesh, the man’s muscles re-formed thicker and stronger. The soldier, a Greater Noble of the Omehi, was already powerful and deadly, but now that his Gifted’s powers flowed through him, he was a colossus.

The Ingonyama let out a spine-chilling howl and launched himself at his enemies. The savages tried to hold, but there was little any man, no matter how skilled, could do against an Enraged Ingonyama.

The Ingonyama shattered a man’s skull with his sword pommel, and in the same swing, he split another from collarbone to waist. Grabbing a third heathen by the arm, he threw him ten strides.

Strain evident on her face, the Gifted did all she could to maintain her Ingonyama’s transformation. “The champion has called a retreat,” she shouted to the Omehi soldiers within earshot. “Get back to the ships!”

The girl—she was too young for Tsiory to think of her as much else—gritted her teeth, pouring energy into the enraged warrior, struggling as six more savages descended on him.

The first of the savages staggered back, his chest collapsed inward by the Ingonyama’s fist. The second, third, and fourth leapt on him together, stabbing at him in concert. Tsiory could see the Gifted staggering with each blow her Ingonyama took. She held on, though, brave thing, as the target of her powers fought and killed.

It’s enough, thought Tsiory, leave. It’s enough.

The Ingonyama didn’t. They almost never did. The colossus was surrounded, swarmed, mobbed, and the savages did so much damage to him that he had to end his connection to the Gifted or kill her too.

The severing was visible as two flashes of light emanating from the bodies of both the Ingonyama and the Gifted. It was difficult to watch what happened next. Unpowered, the Ingonyama’s body shrank and his strength faded. The next blow cut into his flesh and, given time, would have killed him.

The savages gave it no time. They tore him to pieces and ran for the Gifted. She pulled a knife from her tunic and slit her own throat before they could get to her. That didn’t dissuade them. They fell on her and stabbed her repeatedly, hooting as they did.

Tsiory, having seen enough, looked away from the butchery, urging the horse to run faster. He’d make it to the ships and the reserves of the Chosen army. The Ingonyama and Gifted had given him that with their lives. It was hard to think it mattered.

Too many savages had poured out from the tree line. They’d come in force and the Chosen could not hold. The upcoming battle would be his last.

INGONYAMA

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 long-fingered 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, low-level 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.

MONSTER

Taifa’s vision, sense of self, and purpose split. She could see the battlefield from the air. The women and men, dying by the scores, looked small and insignificant.

She could see the two and a half thousand ships of her people, most of them cannibalized for parts, lying on the beach like the half-eaten quarry of some greater predator. She could see Omehi women and men scurrying from the makeshift shelter of those broken ships to the sand to the battle. She could see the ocean behind them all, stretching beyond the horizon, endless.