PROLOGUE

LANDFALL

Queen Taifa stood at the bow of Targon, her beached warship, and looked out at the massacre on the sands. Her other ships were empty. The fighting men and women of the Chosen were already onshore, were already killing and dying. Their screams, not so different from the cries of those they fought, washed over her in waves.

She looked to the sun. It burned high overhead and the killing would not stop until well past nightfall, which meant too many more would die. She heard footsteps on the deck behind her and tried to take comfort in the sounds of Tsiory’s gait.

“My queen,” he said.

Taifa nodded, permitting him to speak, but did not turn away from the slaughter on the shore. If this was to be the end of her people, she would bear witness. She could do that much.

“We cannot hold the beach,” he told her. “We have to retreat to the ships. We have to relaunch them.”

“No, I won’t go back on the water. The rest of the fleet will be here soon.”

“Families, children, the old and infirm. Not fighters. Not Gifted.”

Taifa hadn’t turned. She couldn’t face him, not yet. “It’s beautiful here,” she told him. “Hotter than Osonte, but beautiful. Look.” She pointed to the mountains in the distance. “We landed on a peninsula bordered and bisected by mountains. It’s defensible, arable. We could make a home here. Couldn’t we? A home for my people.”

She faced him. His presence comforted her. Champion Tsiory, so strong and loyal. He made her feel safe, loved. She wished she could do the same for him.

His brows were knitted and sweat beaded on his shaved head. He had been near the front lines, fighting. She hated that, but he was her champion and she could not ask him to stay with her on a beached ship while her people, his soldiers, died.

He shifted and made to speak. She didn’t want to hear it. No more reports, no more talk of the strange gifts these savages wielded against her kind.

“The Malawa arrived a few sun spans ago,” she told him. “My old nursemaid was on board. She went to the Goddess before it made ground.”

“Sanura’s gone? My queen… I’m so—”

“Do you remember how she’d tell the story of the dog that bit me when I was a child?”

“I remember hearing you bit it back and wouldn’t let go. Sanura had to call the Queen’s Guard to pull you off the poor thing.”

Taifa turned back to the beach, filled with the dead and dying in their thousands. “Sanura went to the Goddess on that ship, never knowing we found land, never knowing we escaped the Cull. They couldn’t even burn her properly.” The battle seemed louder. “I won’t go back on the water.”

“Then we die on this beach.”

The moment had arrived. She wished she had the courage to face him for it. “The Gifted, the ones with the forward scouts, sent word. They found the rage.” Taifa pointed to the horizon, past the slaughter, steeling herself. “They’re nested in the Central Mountains, the ones dividing the peninsula, and one of the dragons has just given birth. There is a youngling and I will form a coterie.”

“No,” he said. “Not this. Taifa…”

She could hear his desperation. She would not let it sway her.

“The savages, how can we make peace if we do this to them?” Tsiory said, but the argument wasn’t enough to change her mind, and he must have sensed that. “We were only to follow them,” he said. “If we use the dragons, we’ll destroy this land. If we use the dragons, the Cull will find us.”

That sent a chill through her. Taifa was desperate to forget what they’d run from and aware that, could she live a thousand cycles, she never would. “Can you hold this land for me, my champion?” she asked, hating herself for making this seem his fault, his shortcoming.

“I cannot.”

“Then,” she said, turning to him, “the dragons will.”

Tsiory wouldn’t meet her eyes. That was how much she’d hurt him, how much she’d disappointed him. “Only for a little while,” she said, trying to bring him back to her. “Too little for the Cull to notice and just long enough to survive.”

“Taifa—”

“A short while.” She reached up and touched his face. “I swear it on my love for you.” She needed him and felt fragile enough to break, but she was determined to see her people safe first. “Can you give us enough time for the coterie to do their work?”

Tsiory took her hand and raised it to his lips. “You know I will.”

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.

But it wasn’t endless. She’d crossed it with what was left of the Chosen of the Goddess. She’d saved her people from eradication, and it was not their fate, having found this distant land, to die on its sands. Her people’s sacrifice, Tsiory’s sacrifice, would have purpose, and the natives, heathens one and all, would learn what it meant to oppose her.

The merging completed, and the dragon’s power, its fury, flowed into Taifa. Quickly, she coiled these thick tendrils of consciousness and fashioned them into the ropes that would hold her tight to it.

It was then the savages on the beach spotted the creature, and through its eyes, she saw them turn and point. She could see their fear, smell it, and Taifa tapped the dragon’s anger, stoking it, fueling it, turning the creature’s need for vengeance into a compulsion.

It dove, spiraling toward the beach, and, using its gift, drew more from Isihogo than any human ever could. The dragon took its power from there, from the Goddess, and brought it into the world, igniting its blood. The beast burned, and when the heat threatened to overwhelm it, it blew fire, lighting the world ablaze.

Two dozen women and men, people of this strange land who thought to defend its shores from her, erupted in flame beneath the blast of Taifa’s first attack. She could hear their screams as their lives ended in suffering. Her dragon, twice the size of her warship, with scales harder and sharper than bronze and blacker than tar, swept down and snatched two more of the heathens from the beach, slicing them to pieces in its massive claws, before landing on the sand. The dragon blew fire again, arcing the inferno across the gathered enemy horde.

Those hit by the blast were incinerated, and that was a mercy. The women and men on the attack’s edges were seared by the heat, their flesh bubbling and sloughing off their bones. The ones this didn’t kill choked to death on the fumes of the creature’s acrid blood.

The daughters and sons of these white sands and withered trees, once so fearless in battle, mounted no more attacks. They fell back in terror, scrambling to flee, and in retreat, they faced the rest of the rage.

Taifa’s Entreaters, the most powerful of her Gifted, merged with the two other dragons that answered their call. Together, the rage blew fire so hot that Taifa, only half in her body, still felt its heat from her warship.

The savages, the ones not dead or dying, ran for the safety of the trees, but Taifa pushed her dragon to follow. It rose into the air, chasing those who fled, burning down the tangled foliage that hid her enemies from her. The heat of its fires melted white sand to black glass and where the flames fell left nothing but ash.

As her dragon scorched the earth, Taifa prayed. She prayed to Ananthi, the Goddess, for two things. The first was forgiveness. She begged for it, knowing no mortal would have the grace to offer it, given what she was going to do to the people of this land. After that, after forgiveness, she asked for the power to destroy and the will to see it done.

“My queen,” Taifa heard the KaEid say through the fugue of the merging. “They’re retreating. We’ve won.”

But Tsiory was dead and Taifa would honor him with a funeral pyre built from the corpses of her enemies. She urged her dragon on. She killed and killed, until her wrath cost the lives of most in her Hex, and until there was no one left to burn.

Exhausted, and with the shroud that masked her soul’s light collapsing, Queen Taifa Omehia sacrificed one more Gifted, released the dragon, and folded back into herself. The beach was a smoldering ruin, and with a remnant of the creature’s senses, she could smell the charred flesh, death, and stink of fear that suffused the sand.

She looked skyward as her dragon beat its way higher into the cloudless dusk, making for its nest. As it went, it belched a twisting column of flame, bright as the sun, and let out a mournful keen that almost started her crying. She refused to shed a single tear. The day was won, and though there were many more to come, the Goddess had already answered one of her prayers. Queen Taifa had the will to do what must be done.

Striding past the bodies of the Gifted she’d sacrificed and ignoring the horrified faces of her Ruling Council, Taifa turned away from the foreign land that would be her people’s new home. She quit the ship’s deck, descending stairs that took her from light to dark, and, finding herself alone in the false twilight, placed a hand to her stomach. She had so little of Tsiory left, but what she had she would protect.

“Let them think me a monster,” the Dragon Queen thought. “I will be a monster, if it means we survive.”

CHAPTER ONE

HEIR

One hundred eighty-six cycles later

Tau stumbled as he avoided the Petty Noble’s swing. He tried to regain his footing, but Jabari was on him and he had to hop backward to survive the larger man’s attack.

“Come on, Tau! You can’t always run!” Aren yelled from outside the fighting circle, the words made indistinct by the booming of the ocean below.

Tau’s sword arm was numb and he couldn’t wait for the day’s training to be done. “I’m baiting him,” he lied as Jabari pushed him closer to the cliffs. Another step and Tau would be out of the fighting circle, losing him the match.

For Aren’s benefit and to prove he’d learned something that season, Tau made a halfhearted attack, cutting for Jabari’s leg, but Jabari bashed the sword aside and launched a counter, catching him on the wrist.

Tau yelped and, having had enough, was about to step out of the circle when Jabari leapt forward, swinging for him. Tau threw himself back, hoping to avoid being hit again, but his heel hit one of the stones marking the circle’s boundaries and he went down with enough force to wind him.

He was on his back, near the cliff’s edge, and the ocean was loud enough to set his teeth chattering. He glanced down and wondered if rolling over and letting himself fall could hurt any worse than his wrist and bruised ribs already did. Far below, the water roiled like it was boiling, crashing against itself and spewing froth. Tau knew falling into the Roar was death.

“Get up, Tau,” Aren said.

He did, slowly and without enthusiasm.

“Look,” Jabari said, pointing to the water.

Tau saw it then. From the ground, he’d missed the boat.

“Are they mad?” asked Jabari.

“What is it?” Aren asked.

Jabari pointed again. “A boat.”

Aren Solarin, Tau’s father and the man in charge of Petty Noble Jabari Onai’s training, walked over. The three men watched the small watercraft bob in the churning waters. “They’ll be lucky if they don’t drown,” Aren said.

“Can you tell who they are?” Jabari asked Tau.

Tau was known for his sharp eyes. “Doesn’t look like one of ours…”

Aren looked closer. “Hedeni?”

“Maybe,” Tau said. “I don’t see anyone on it. It’s heading for the boneyard…”

Waves drove the abandoned ship against the group of rocks, and it was dashed to pieces.

Jabari shook his head. “How did we do it?”

“Do what, nkosi?” said Aren, using the Petty Noble’s honorific as he scanned the sinking wreckage.

“Cross it,” Jabari said. “No ship we make now can sail more than a few hundred strides from shore. How did we cross all of it?”

“Nkosi, perhaps we should save the deep thinking for your tutors,” Aren said, still trying to pick out details that might identify the boat as theirs or the enemy’s. “My concern is your sword work. Let’s go again.”

Boat forgotten, Jabari smiled and moved to the opposite side of the circle, swinging his sword in looping circles. He loved fighting and couldn’t wait to join the war effort.

Aren walked over to Tau, grabbed at the sword belt he was wearing, and pretended to be adjusting it for him. “You need to give everything to this,” he said, almost too quietly for Tau to hear.

“To what end?” Tau asked. “I won’t win. It’ll only drag out the loss and end the day in pain.”

“I’m not asking you to win. That’s not solely in your control,” Aren said. “I’m asking that you fight to win. Anything less is the acceptance of loss and an admission that you deserve it.”

As Tau nursed his wrist, already swollen and likely to welt, his father finished tightening his sword belt, then stepped out of the fighting circle.

“At the ready!” Aren shouted.

Tau looked to the man he was about to fight. Jabari was taller, stronger, faster. The Petty Noble was born that way, and Tau couldn’t see the point in giving his all to a game he knew was unfair.

“Remember, both of you,” Aren said, “by attacking, you push your opponent to defend.”

Tau wasn’t listening. He’d spotted Handmaiden Zuri. She’d just crested the hill, arm in arm with Handmaiden Anya, and he was caught in the sway of Zuri’s hips. It didn’t hurt that the knee-high slit in her dress offered glimpses of calf. Tau smiled and Zuri’s brown eyes danced as she raised a questioning eyebrow at him. Anya squeezed Zuri’s hand and giggled.

Aren raised his fist. “Fight!”

Wanting to impress Zuri, and against his own better judgment, Tau ran at Jabari. The Petty Noble looked surprised by the aggression, but he rose to the challenge and attacked high, too high.

It was a rare opening, and thanking the Goddess for his luck, Tau lunged, sending out a strike that would have disemboweled Jabari if they were fighting with real swords instead of dulled practice ones. The attack didn’t land. Jabari had baited him, expecting the reckless thrust, only to whirl away and off the killing line.

Hitting nothing, Tau stumbled forward and was still trying to get his feet under him when Jabari’s sword belted him below the armpit. The blow knocked Tau further off-balance, drove the air from his lungs, and sent him tumbling, his fall accompanied by Handmaiden Anya’s tittering.

Embarrassed and battered, Tau looked up to see that Zuri, though not laughing, hid a smile behind her hand. Worse, his audience had grown. A High Harvester was standing with the young women.

“Nkosi,” said the Harvester to Jabari, sparing not even a glance for Tau. Tau thought this one’s name was Berko. He was from the mountain hamlet of Daba, where they grew potatoes, tiny, misshapen potatoes. “I’ve come from the keep. Umbusi Onai as well as your father and brother are looking for you.”

Jabari grimaced. He wasn’t close with his older brother and Tau couldn’t blame him. Lekan was self-impressed, condescending, and the single best argument against making firstborns heirs to anything.

“I’m training,” Jabari told the Harvester.

“It’s news from Palm.”

That caught Tau’s attention. News from the capital was rare.

“From Palm City?” asked Jabari.

“Yes, nkosi. It’s the queen… She… Well, she’s dead.”

Anya gasped, Zuri covered her mouth, and Jabari looked dumbfounded. Tau turned to his father but found no comfort there.

“W-who leads the Chosen now?” Jabari asked.

Berko, rail thin but paunchy, with a patchy gray beard, stepped closer. “Princess Tsiora, the second, will be queen.”

“Then, Palm City seeks ratification for her ascension,” said Jabari.

Though it hadn’t happened since he’d been born, Tau had heard of this. New queens asked the Petty, Greater, and Royal Nobles to accept their rule. It was a formality. The Omehia line had ruled since before the time of the Guardians.

Jabari looked to Tau’s father. “Apologies, Aren. I have to go.”

“Of course. Goddess guide you and may She also embrace Queen Ayanna in Her glory.”

Jabari marched for the keep, and Anya, eager to hear the gossip, rushed after him, dragging Zuri with her. Tau didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.

“She’s a child,” said Berko.

Aren gave the man a look. “What?”

“Queen Ayanna’s granddaughter? She’s a child.”

“Princess Tsiora is of age,” Tau’s father said.

“Cancer.” Berko hawked and spat on the packed dirt of the fighting circle. “Hard to believe things like that can kill royalty. First Princess Tsiora’s mother; now her grandmother. The line grows thin and the princess will need an heir or it’ll be the end of the Omehias.”

Tau spoke up. “There’s her older brother, Prince Xolani, and there’s the younger sister too.”

“Brother doesn’t count and Princess Esi is… unsettled,” Berko told him. “Add all the raids to the balance and it’s not a good time for a child queen.” Berko lowered his voice. “Let’s not forget, it’s been a long time since our queens have been gifted.” Tau had to lean in to hear the last part. “A bit strange that the Omehias can no longer call the dragons themselves, neh?” Tau saw his father stiffen. Berko saw it too. “I’m just saying, is all,” he said, turning to call down the hill to the two Drudge waiting there near a ration wagon. “One Low Common portion and one full portion for Aren.”

“I’m High Common,” Tau said, annoyed he had to correct the man.

Berko shrugged. “And one High Common portion!”

One of the Drudge took two sacks from the wagon and tried to run up the hill. The scrawny man, dressed in little better than rags, couldn’t keep the pace and slowed to a hurried walk before getting to them. Breathing hard from the brief run, he placed the sacks by Tau’s feet and waited to see if the Harvester needed anything more to be done. He kept his head down and Tau couldn’t blame him. The Drudge would be beaten if he met the eyes of his betters, and Tau wasn’t sure the thin man could survive that.

The Drudge’s skin was dark, almost as dark as Tau’s, and his head was a mass of kinked hair. It was forbidden for them to shave their heads like proper men, and his poor state made it hard for Tau to tell what Lesser caste he’d originally come from.

“Tau,” his father said.

Tau gathered up the sacks, making a show of examining their contents, but when the High Harvester looked away, he placed two potatoes near the Drudge. The man’s eyes widened at the unexpected offering, and, hand shaking, he snatched them up, tucking them under the folds of his rags.

“Coming,” Tau said to his father.

The man looked half-starved. He needed food. Tau did too, though. He trained most afternoons and that was hard to do on an empty stomach.

Jabari would have called him softhearted. He’d have said the man’s lot was his own doing. The only Lessers who became Drudge were the ones who didn’t make it into the real military and still refused to join the Ihagu.

Survival rates for Ihagu, the low-level, unskilled fighters who made up the front lines of every battle, were abysmal. Yet, most would say being a Drudge was a worse fate than an Ihagu’s near certain death. When given the choice, almost everyone chose to fight. After all, a lucky few were assigned defensive duty and stationed near the fiefs or cities.

As Tau walked past with the rations, his father put a hand on his shoulder. “Kindly done,” Aren whispered, little escaping his notice. Then, louder, he said, “Take the food home. I need to see the umbusi. With this news from Palm, we’ll want to add more patrols.”

Tau nodded and went to do as he was bid. He made it three strides when he heard Nkiru, his father’s second-in-command, shouting from down the mountain. The muscular man, along with a full unit of the fief’s Ihagu, was running. He was drenched in sweat, his sword’s scabbard slapping at his thigh. It would have been humorous if not for the look on his face. He was terrified.

“Raid! Raid!” he yelled, struggling to be heard over the ocean’s roar. “The hedeni are raiding!”

DUTY

Tau moved to his father’s side as Nkiru arrived.

“Signal smoke, near Daba,” Nkiru said, blowing hard.

“Daba?” asked the High Harvester. “Daba?”

Nkiru ignored him. “‘Hedeni crossing fields,’ that’s the message. They must have landed a war party and climbed the cliffs. If they’re in the farming fields it won’t be long before they’re in the hamlet.”

Tau thought about the wrecked boat. It had been an enemy ship. He marveled at the stupidity and courage of sailing the Roar. How many had they lost to the waters in order to mount the raid?

“Did the message say anything about numbers?” Tau’s father asked.

“No,” Nkiru said. “But if they’ve come this far—”

“Send men. Send everyone,” Berko pleaded. “You can’t let them reach Daba.”

Aren gave orders to the gathered fighters. “Nkiru, Ekon, take the men you have and head for the mountain barracks. Empty it out.”

“Yes!” said Berko, frantic. “I’ll go too. I have to get back home.”

“I’ll make for the keep,” Aren said. “I’ll gather the men there and ask the umbusi’s Gifted to send an edification. We have to call in the military. This isn’t a normal raid. If they’ve come this far, they’ve come in force. The fighters at the mountain barracks won’t be enough.”

“Aren… it’s just us,” Nkiru said. “Lekan won’t let the keep guard come to Daba’s defense. I just left him and he says it’s too risky to send everyone. He’s worried that the hedeni might also send raiders here, to Kerem.”

Aren closed his eyes, drawing a slow breath. “Lekan is not right in this,” he said. “If the hedeni sailed the Roar to get to us, they’ve come to do damage in force. They won’t split their fighters and pick at us. They’ll attack as one. They’ll destroy Daba.” He looked down the mountain, in the direction of the keep. “I have to speak with Lekan. We need the Gifted to call the military and we need enough men to defend the hamlet until the military arrives. We can’t do that with just the men from the mountain barracks. We need the keep guard.”

“He won’t…,” Nkiru said, trailing off and knuckling his sword’s pommel. “Lekan has already called for the military, but he also ordered me to tell you to lead Daba’s defense. He says he’ll see to the keep’s safety.… Aren, he won’t go to Daba, and he won’t let the guards go either.”

Berko shot looks at the men discussing the fate of his home. “What does this mean? What do we do?” he asked.

Aren looked to the sky. It was a cloudless day, merciless in its heat. “We defend Daba,” he said. “That’s what we do.”

Nkiru’s forehead was crinkled with lines of worry, but he turned to the men and did his best to sound eager. “You heard the inkokeli. Move!”

The fighters, Berko, and the two Drudge went up the mountain, making for the Taala path. It was the quickest way to the barracks and to Daba.

“Go home,” Aren told Tau, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll see you when it’s done.”

He squeezed Tau’s shoulder, patted it, and left. Tau stood there and watched his father follow the rest, the lot of them racing against what little time the people in Daba had, before the hedeni were among them.

He’d not seen his father that concerned in a long time. It meant Aren didn’t think they’d hold Daba. It meant there was a damned good chance they’d all die.

“No…,” Tau said. “Not because of Lekan. Not because of that coward.”

He rushed to the closest bit of brush and hid his practice blade and ration sacks. He belted on his sharpened bronze sword, the one that had belonged to his father’s father, and gripped its hilt. He felt the etchings his grandfather had made, spelling out the family name in a spiral that wound its way from pommel to guard. “Solarin,” it read.

Steadied and feeling ready for the task ahead, Tau ran down the mountain, in the opposite direction his father had gone. He went to find Jabari. Lekan might be craven, but Jabari was as decent as Nobles came. He’d help. He’d tell his mother to order the keep’s men to go to Daba, and that would stop Tau’s father from getting killed.

Before long, the Onai’s keep, the largest building in Kerem, came into view. It was two floors tall, had a central courtyard, and was surrounded by an adobe wall that was nine strides high. The adobe was smooth and that spoke to the Onai’s wealth.

“Eh, what’re you about, Tau?” a reedy voice asked from above.

Tau looked to the top of the fortifying wall. It was Ochieng, one of the Ihagu assigned to be a keep guard. Ochieng had always been a blustering oaf, and, a full cycle older than Tau, he’d already reached manhood. He hadn’t passed the test to be part of the real military and had come back from the southern capital with his head low and prospects grim.

He’d been lucky; Tau’s father spoke on his behalf, and on the strength of Aren’s word, the keep guard took Ochieng as one of their own. Most of Ochieng’s family were either dead or Drudge, and if Aren hadn’t vouched for him, Ochieng would have followed in their footsteps. As it stood, Tau felt owed.

“Open the gate, Ochieng. I don’t have time.”

“Don’t have time, neh? Where’s your hurry?”

“Hedeni raid,” Tau said, hoping the news would shock the guard to action.

“Just heard. What’s it got to do with you?”

“I have to see Jabari.”

“He know you’re here?”

“What do you think?” Tau said.

“Don’t know what you’re fooling about,” Ochieng muttered, disappearing behind the wall. A moment later, Tau heard the heavy latch on the bronze gate swing up and away.

“Hurry. In you get.”

“Thanks, Ochieng.”

“Didn’t open the gate for you. Tell Aren I said hello.”

Leaving the gate behind, Tau came to a juncture in the keep’s paths and stopped. Jabari could be almost anywhere, and, worried he was making the wrong choice, he went toward the keep proper and Jabari’s rooms.

He moved through the keep’s yards at a brisk walk, head down, trying not to draw the attention of any of its handmaidens or administrators. Lessers in the keep tended to be women or, if male, they were higher caste than Tau. He’d stand out and didn’t want to be stopped or, worse, prevented from getting to Jabari.

He sped up, eyes on the dirt, anxious to get where he was going, which was why he came near to knocking his younger half sister on her ass.

“What in the Goddess’s… Tau?” said Jelani, unable to keep the surprise from her face. “Why are you here?”

“Hello, Jelani.”

“Don’t ‘hello’ me.”

“Uh… how’s Mother?”

“That’ll depend,” Jelani said, glaring at Tau like she’d found a maggot in her rations, “on what I tell her about seeing you here.”

“I’m looking for… Jabari asked to see me.”

Jelani squinted at him. “Jabari?”

“Yes, there’s a raid in the mountains… the hedeni—”

“He’s in the bathhouse. Find him and leave, before I tell my mother.”

Our mother, Tau thought, inclining his head and hurrying back to the path he hadn’t selected. He swore he could feel Jelani’s beetle-black eyes on his back as he went. She hated having a half-low as a sibling. That’s how she thought of him, half-low.

It made Tau want to yell that he was as High Common as she was. Status came from the woman who bore you, and his name was Tafari, just like hers. It wouldn’t have done any good. Jelani knew their mother wouldn’t have anything to do with him, or Aren.

Pushing his sister out of mind, Tau stepped up to the bathhouse, opened its door, and was hit by a blast of hot scented air. “Jabari?” he said into the fog. He didn’t dare go in. “Jabari?”

“Tau? That you?” said a familiar voice. “What are you about?”

He’d have only one chance to convince Jabari to help. “There’s a fight coming,” Tau said, “and if we don’t do something, the people your family pledged to protect will die.”

Tau heard water slosh around, and then Jabari appeared through the steam, towering over him, stark naked.

“What’s this?”

Lekan hadn’t told Jabari about the raid. Tau corrected that, telling him everything, then begging him to act. “Go to your mother,” he said. “She’s the umbusi; tell her the defense of Daba will fail without more men.”

“Tau, I’m the second son. Lekan’s the one being groomed to command our fief’s men. She won’t go against him on my word.”

“Jabari—”

“She won’t, Tau.”

“We have to do something!” Tau said, struggling to keep his voice respectful.

“I know, I know. There’s a fight coming and my family must protect the people of Kerem.” Jabari clapped Tau’s chest with an open palm. “I have it.”

“Have what?”

“A plan,” Jabari said.

RAID

There,” Tau said, pointing at a flickering light in the distance. “Do you see it?” The light was bright against the evening’s darkness, but he was never sure how far Jabari could see.

“I see it,” Jabari said. “They’re burning Daba.”

He picked up the pace, and Tau, lungs raw from running, struggled to keep up with his friend’s longer strides.

He couldn’t believe he’d gone along with Jabari’s plan and tried not to think about what they’d find when they got to the hamlet. “What if this doesn’t work?” Tau asked. “What if they don’t come?”

“They’ll come.”

Before leaving the keep, Jabari had gone to its barracks and told everyone he was going to Daba to defend the hamlet. The highest-ranking guard in the room tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t be swayed.

It was clever. Jabari couldn’t countermand Lekan’s orders, but the guards were bound, on pain of death, to protect every member of the Onai family. By letting them know he was putting himself in harm’s way, Jabari was forcing them to organize and send an honor guard to protect him. Tau hoped the extra men would be enough.

“Swords out!” Jabari said as they came over a hill. Tau pulled his weapon free, looked down on the hamlet, and froze.

Daba sat on a plateau with natural borders. The most obvious border was four hundred strides directly ahead. There, the plateau became mountainous again and the rock continued its climb to the clouds. To Tau’s right, and roughly eight hundred strides away, was the hamlet’s central circle. Beyond it, the plateau ended in a series of steep but scalable cliffs that dropped toward the valley floor. On Tau’s left were the raiders.

The hedeni had come from the paths leading to Daba’s growing fields, and they had burned half the hamlet already. The flaxen roofs of the larger houses were on fire, and in the night’s dark, the flames silhouetted the fleeing women, men, and children of Daba.

The Ihagu, Aren’s men, were fighting a series of skirmishes between the hamlet’s tightly packed homes and storage barns. They were outnumbered and losing ground but could only go so far. The hedeni were herding everyone to the cliffs.

Tau didn’t know what he’d expected, but this wasn’t it. Scarred and disfigured, marked by the Goddess’s curse, the hedeni held either bone spears or bone-and-bronze hatchets and chopped at the Chosen like woodcutters. They used no recognizable fighting stances and their attacks followed no rhythm or sequence. Worst of all, the Ihagu had been reduced to fighting just as savagely. Both sides hacked at each other, and every so often someone fell back, dead, wounded, or maimed.

“What is this?” Tau asked, his voice too low for Jabari to hear.

“There,” Jabari shouted, running down, not waiting to see if Tau followed.

Tau tracked his path and saw three of the raiders harrying a woman and child. Jabari yelled, charged in, and Tau chased after him.

By the time he reached the flats, Jabari had already engaged two hedeni. They were circling to his sides, trying to get between him and the woman and child.

Tau went for the third savage, arcing his sword in a blow meant to decapitate, but the wretch brought up a hatchet and blocked the strike. The raider, a mass of dirty hair and mud-caked skin, blundered forward, swinging the weapon low, aiming for Tau’s thigh.

Tau leapt back, fear lending him speed, and the hatchet’s blade hissed past his kneecap, a hairsbreadth from taking his leg off at the calf. Blood pumping and desperate to shift the fight’s momentum in his favor, Tau attacked. He stabbed out with his blade, aiming for the heart, and, as he’d been taught, kept his eye on the target, ready to react when the hedena dodged.

The collision, then, was a surprise. Tau’s blade plunged from tip to hilt, into and through his opponent’s chest. The savage had made no move to avoid the sword’s point at all.

Tau didn’t understand. The lunge had been obvious. It wasn’t a serious killing blow. Anyone with decent training would have avoided it.

He looked into the face of the person he’d stabbed. The woman’s eyes were big and wide, staring off at something in the distance. Her mouth, full-lipped, formed a gentle O, and the raider’s hair, dreaded by lack of care, hung down her scarred face.

Tau pulled back in revulsion, but his blade wouldn’t come free. The woman—or girl; he couldn’t tell—cried out as the bronze ripped her insides.

She reached for Tau, perhaps to hold him close, hoping to halt the blade’s bitter exit, and her fingers, bloody already, touched his face. She tried to speak, lips flecked with spittle, but her life ran its course, and she sighed before the weight of her lifeless body pulled Tau to the ground.

“Tau!” Jabari’s voice sounded far away. “Are you hurt?”

“No… I—I hurt her, I think,” Tau heard himself say.

“Get up. More are coming. We have to make it to the rest of our men,” Jabari said. “Is that your blood?”

“Blood?”

“Your face.”

Jabari and the woman and child were staring at him. The two hedeni men who had faced Jabari were dead.

“It’s not me,” Tau told them. “Not my blood.”

“We have to go,” said Jabari.

Tau nodded, struggled to jerk his blade free from the hedena woman’s body, took a step, doubled over, and retched. Nothing came up. He retched again, his stomach still heaving when he forced himself upright. The child was staring at him. He wiped his mouth with the back of his blood-streaked hand. “Fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Jabari looked Tau over and began moving. “We have to go.”

Tau followed, looking back once. The woman he’d fought lay in the mud like a broken doll. He’d never killed someone. He was shaking. He’d never—

“This way,” said Jabari as the four of them weaved between huts and buildings, doing their best to avoid the fighting all around them.

Jabari was heading toward the barricade that the Ihagu had set up at the edge of the hamlet’s central circle. They’d used overturned wagons, tables, even broken-down doors to block the paths that led to it. They were making a stand. They wouldn’t last. There were too many hedeni.

“In here!” Jabari shoved the woman, who had picked up and was carrying the child, through the open door of a hut. He dashed in after her and Tau was right behind.

The hut was far larger than the one Tau shared with his father. It must belong to a High Harvester. Maybe even Berko, he thought, as the first hedena warrior burst through the doorway.

The man, hatchet out, made for Jabari. He didn’t see Tau and Tau sliced at him, cutting into his arm. Hollering in pain, the raider stumbled into the nearest wall, and Jabari stabbed him in the gut.

The next hedena through the door had a spear. It was a woman. Tau knew the hedeni fought women alongside men. He knew it like he knew he had ten toes, but seeing a second female fighter gave him pause.

He should attack. He didn’t. She thrust her spear at him and it would have taken out his throat if Jabari hadn’t reacted, knocking it from her hands.

She drew a dagger from her belt. Tau remained rooted, noticing instead that she wore no armor. She had on an earth-toned wrap that covered her breasts and looped round her back, where it dove into loose and flowing pants. She was sandaled and her hands were bangled, the golden metal bouncing on slim wrists as she flicked her dagger at Jabari.

Jabari danced back. She came forward and Tau saw his chance. He was behind her. He just had to kill her.

On weak knees, Tau stepped forward and swung his sword as hard as he could, sending the flat of his blade hammering into the side of her head, knocking her down. Jabari followed up. He kicked the dagger from her hand and leapt on her, pressing his sword to her neck.

“You speak Empiric?” Jabari snarled. “How many ships did you land on our shores? How many raiders?” He pressed the point of his sword into her neck, drawing blood. “Speak or die!”

She looked frightened but spat in Jabari’s face, closed her eyes, and began to spasm. Jabari scurried back, making distance, as her skin, already scarred by the Goddess’s curse, bubbled and boiled. Blood erupted from her nose, ears, mouth, and eyes, and she began to scream and scream and scream. Then, like a candle blown, her life was gone, snuffed out.

The Lesser woman let out a choked gasp and turned away, holding the child closer. The child was crying. Jabari was still as stone, watching the dead savage with wide eyes.

He turned to Tau, mouth open, brow furrowed. “Demon-death,” he said. “Your father told us it’s what they do when captured. I didn’t believe it.”

Tau could think of nothing worth saying.

Jabari stood, wiped the savage’s spit from his face, and stumbled away, using the wall for support. Tau, along with the woman and child, followed. Jabari bashed out a shuttered window at the back of the building and they crawled out of it, emerging in the middle of a circle of tightly packed homes.

In front of them was a storage barn, and they were still a hundred strides from the Ihagu’s barricade. Jabari tried the barn’s door. They hadn’t been seen and could go through the long building. With luck, they’d come out a short run from the barricade and the rest of their people. Jabari broke the door’s lock and they went in.

The storage barn was large, but its interior was tight, crammed with shelves, most empty. That was bad. It was almost Harvest, and if the storehouse was any indication, the Omehi would have trouble feeding their people.

As they slunk through, Tau began to have trouble breathing.

“What are you doing?” Jabari asked.

He couldn’t stop panting and felt dizzy. “Too close,” he said about the shelves and walls.

“What?”

Tau squeezed his eyes shut. It didn’t help and he couldn’t get enough air. He stopped moving, unable to keep going, when a cool hand slipped into his.

“It’s a few more steps,” the Lesser woman told him. “Keep your eyes closed. I’ll guide you.”

Tau nodded and stumbled after her.

“Ready?” asked Jabari.

Tau, still nauseous, opened an eye. They’d walked the length of the storehouse and were at its front doors. “Hurry,” he said, wanting nothing more than to be outside.

“If the Goddess wills, we’ll have a clear run for the barricade,” Jabari said. “We make it there and we’re safe.”

Tau wasn’t sure anywhere in Daba could be called safe. He’d seen how many hedeni were out there.

“Ready?” Jabari asked again.

The woman, eyes wide, nodded.

“Go!” Jabari yelled, kicking the door open.

Tau pitched his way through, fixated on being free of the barn, and ran into a startled hedena. He bowled the man over and Jabari stabbed the downed savage. There were four, maybe five other raiders, but they were fighting Ihagu. Jabari joined the fight, and Tau, head spinning, grabbed the woman’s hand, pulling her away.

The barricade was just ahead and he made for it. The woman, carrying the child, was slowing him, and he could picture raiders running them down. Gritting his teeth, he tightened his grip on the woman’s hand and pulled her after him. The men behind the barricade saw him coming. Tau thought he recognized one of them, but the blood caked on the man’s face made it hard to tell.

As they hit the barricade, the man shoved aside a pile of overturned chairs, making a climbable path for Tau and his two charges.

“Your turn now,” the bloody-faced Ihagu yelled, after the woman and child were behind the ramshackle wall.

“Tendaji?” Tau asked.

“Tau?” said Tendaji. “What are you doing here? Never mind, climb up!”

“Can’t. Jabari is still out there.”

“Jabari’s here?” The shock in Tendaji’s voice spoke volumes.

Tau nodded, and with fear grasping at his guts, he forced himself to turn and run back to the fighting. He didn’t have to go far. They were coming to him.

Jabari was bleeding through the arm of his gambeson and the other warriors carried one of their own.

“I’m well,” said Jabari, waving off Tau’s concern. “Let’s get behind the barricade.”

Tau helped carry the wounded Ihagu to the wall.

“Jabari?” Tendaji said, mouth dropping open. Tau had warned him, but actually seeing one of the heirs to the fief in the middle of a raid must have been too much for him to accept.

Tendaji helped lift the wounded man and then helped Tau and Jabari. Once the last fighter was over the barricade, they shifted the rubble back in place, blocking the way.

Behind it, Tau had hoped to feel safe. He didn’t. Most of the Ihagu were injured, the ones fighting at the contested sections were being overwhelmed, and the townspeople were frantic.

Looking beyond the barricade, Tau saw that the hedeni were being heavily reinforced, and possibly a hundred more of them were racing down the paths and into the flats. Tau looked to Jabari, and for once, the optimistic second son looked worried. This was not a battle they could win. Even Jabari’s honor guard, if they made it to Daba before everyone was dead, would only slow the inevitable.

“Get back, nkosi,” Tendaji cautioned, remembering Jabari’s honorific this time. “They’re coming.”

“Let them,” Jabari said, stepping up to the barricade.

Tendaji looked like he would say more. Instead, he shifted, making room.

Tau stepped up on Jabari’s other side. “For the queen,” he said with little conviction, which was still more than he felt.

“For the Goddess,” intoned Jabari and Tendaji together. The three men hefted their weapons. The barricade wouldn’t hold and they wouldn’t last, not against the number of hedeni coming for them, but they’d give a good accounting of themselves.

GUARDIANS

The first wave of hedeni hit the barricade, and it was madness. Tau stabbed and swung at limbs and faces. He sliced away someone’s fingers, praying they’d come from an enemy’s hand; was almost scalped by one of the raiders; and barely managed to push away a third before she could climb onto his side of the barricade.

It didn’t matter. There were too many. There had always been too many. It was why the Goddess had blessed her Chosen with gifts. It was why she had given them dragons.

The burst of fire exploded a hundred strides in front of the barricade, singeing Tau’s eyebrows. He threw himself back, away from the searing heat, and as soon as he regained some semblance of sense, he saw that Jabari and Tendaji were on the ground too. Tau tried to speak. His spit had been cooked away.

“Guardians!” yelled a hoarse voice from farther down the barricade. “Guardians!”

His vision swimming, Tau looked up and saw his first dragon up close. The behemoth, its body a mass of pure-black scales that drank in light and twisted the eye, ripped through the air. Tau watched it course toward the hedeni, sinuous tail trailing behind, lashing the smoke from Daba’s fires to hazy shreds.

When it was close enough, the black creature opened its maw and lit the evening with a twisting pillar of sun-bright flame, thick as three men. Tau tottered to his feet and climbed the barricade, watching the dragon’s chain of fire explode against the ground. The hedeni who were hit were vaporized, and the dragon flew on, past Daba’s plateau, turning for another pass.

“Tau?” said a voice he would recognize anywhere.

“Father,” he said, turning to face Aren Solarin.

“Why, Tau?” his father asked. “Why?”

Tau’s mouth opened and closed, no words coming.

“After I heard about the raid, I sought him out and ordered him to accompany me,” Jabari lied. “It’s my duty, as son of the umbusi, to fight with my mother’s men. I know I’m not yet an Indlovu, but this is my place, and I couldn’t come alone.”

Aren eyed Jabari and shouted to the nearby listeners. “Shore up the barricades! The Guardians won’t do us any good when the hedeni are mixed in with our own people.” The gawkers snapped into action. “Jabari, as inkokeli of your mother’s fighters, your place is best decided by me. By coming here, you’ve risked your life.”

Jabari was forced to nod, accepting as strict a chastisement as Aren could give him. Tau looked down and away. The words were also meant for him.

“Please, Aren, accept my apologies,” Jabari offered. “I’m only doing what I believe I must.” He lifted his chin and seemed to stand straighter. “I also went to the keep barracks. The guard knows I’m here. They’ll send men.”

Aren grunted. “Ill-advised, but smartly done. My men and I thank you for it. Now, stay back from the fighting.” He marched away to give his men more orders. “It would break my heart to have to tell your mother that you’d died.” More words meant for Tau.

“Ihagu,” Aren shouted. “Form up and help the townspeople carry what they can.” Everyone began moving. “If the Gifted have enough reason to call the Guardians, it means we must run.”

“Run?” Jabari asked Tau.

The roar of several hundred foreign voices answered in Tau’s place, and the two men stepped onto the barricade in time to see the full force of hedeni raiders charging in their direction.

“Goddess…,” said Tendaji, his voice little more than a whisper against the howling tumult racing their way.

“Away from the barricade,” ordered Tau’s father. “Run. Now!”

Jabari was off the barricade first, Tendaji and Tau right behind. Needing little encouragement from the Ihagu, the townspeople abandoned everything but their loved ones, and they ran too.

“We’re being herded,” shouted Jabari. “When the flats end, we’ll hit the cliffs. There are no paths this way.”

The raid had been well planned. The initial attacking force was large, but not too large. The Ihagu and townspeople had been led to believe they could hold Daba and had willingly trapped themselves with their backs to the cliffs. Once they’d done that, the hedeni launched their real attack, proving Tau’s father’s worst fears. This was no raid; it was an extermination.

The Guardian made a difference. It would thin the hedeni’s numbers, but like Aren had said, if the savages got in among the Chosen, the dragon would have to hold its fire or burn the people it had come to save. Tau thought this through and knew what would come next.

“Ihagu,” his father shouted. “Form up, battle lines.”

It was the only reasonable choice. The Ihagu would stand and fight. They’d slow the hedeni enough to allow the townspeople some chance at escape.

Tau stopped running and turned to face the horrifying mass of enemy flesh, with their sharpened bronze and bone. Tendaji was beside him, his presence a surprising comfort. His father ran up as well.

“Jabari, Tau,” he said. “I need you to guide the townspeople down the mountain. Take them to safety.”

“You ask too much, Aren,” Jabari replied. “I’ll be no help to them and you can’t save me from this fate. I’ll stay, just like every other fighter here.”

Conflicting emotions played across Aren’s face. Tau saw pride and fear warring with each other. He’d been trying to save them.

“We’ll show them what it means to be Chosen, Father,” Tau said, his hands shaking.

“So we will,” Aren said, holding Tau’s eyes with his, before turning to yell his orders to the rest. “Tighten the lines. Stand firm. Remember, the men to your left, to your right, they’re your sword brothers. Keep them safe and they’ll do the same for you.”

Aren stopped there, waiting for the right moment. It came quickly. “For the Goddess!” he bellowed.

“For the Goddess!” they screamed back as the hedeni front lines smashed into them.

WARRIORS

The fighting was a nightmare of bronze and blood. Weapons flashed in and out of Tau’s sight; he fought wildly, yelled himself hoarse, received a shallow but biting cut to the leg, and was pulled back by Nkiru, his father’s second-in-command. Tau tried to thank him, but the older warrior had moved on, his sword swinging at anything not Chosen.

Tau spotted his father and Jabari, and, slowed by his weakened leg, he pushed his way back to the front lines. Tendaji was beside him, until he wasn’t, the bitter fighting splitting them up.

Afraid of being separated from the Ihagu, Tau tried to get closer to his father and slipped. He went down and was nearly trampled by the press of women and men trying to kill one another. He pushed himself to a knee, the head of a spear whizzed past his ear, and, blindly, he punched his sword at the spear holder, missing his mark but coming close enough to make the fighter curse and fall back into the clot of hedeni.

He scrambled to his feet and glanced down at what had made him fall. It was Tendaji, his head crushed. Tau’s stomach lurched and he stumbled away from the body, bumping into one of Aren’s men, who sliced him across the arm with an errant swing.

The cut was not a bad one, but Tau’s arm lit up in a line of pain. He hissed at the sting of it and found he was taking rapid, shallow breaths that didn’t help at all. His sight also seemed to be going, his vision closing in at the edges with black and red.

Panicked, in pain, and afraid he was going blind, he pushed back and away from the thickest fighting. He was about to flee, run down the mountainside with the townspeople, when a hedena attacked the Ihagu beside him.

The Ihagu was wrestling a hatchet from another raider and didn’t see the spear coming for his spine. He’d die without even knowing what killed him. Tau tried to call out a warning as he leapt forward, but nothing came out. His voice was gone.

He crashed into the spear-wielding savage and they went down, struggling, teeth bared, growling; then a sword flashed over Tau’s shoulder and into the hedena’s cheek, tearing the man’s face in two. The hedena gurgled, scrabbled at him, and went limp as Aren took Tau’s arm, hauling him to his feet.

“Back,” his father said, his sword point dragging in the dirt. “Their attack is failing.”

Tau, blood and muck coating him, looked for the man he’d tried to save. He found him nearby, on the ground and dead. Tau stared at the body. It didn’t make sense. He’d been alive a breath ago.

“The Ihashe and Indlovu are here,” his father told him. “Goddess be praised.”

Tau looked past the skirmish seething around him, and out there among the savages, he saw them—the might of the Chosen military.

Battling the hedeni were Ihashe, the elite fighters drafted from the Lesser castes, and Indlovu, the larger and more powerful Noble caste warriors. They all fought fiercely, but the main prong of the Chosen counterattack was led by a giant. He wore bronze-plated leather armor painted red and black. He had a shield on one arm and a shining bronze sword in the other hand. He was an Enraged Ingonyama.

The Ingonyama was close to twice Tau’s height, his arms bulging with muscle, and he moved faster than should have been possible for someone his size. He fought like a god.

“Hold the line,” Tau’s father ordered the Ihagu. “The military are here!”

In the time it took Aren to speak, the Ingonyama had cut his way through an entire line of hedeni, whipping his sword around hard enough to slice through two men in a single blow. Three more savages attacked and he belted the first away with his shield, kicked the next in the chest, and with the pommel of his sword, cracked the third’s skull like it was a rotten nut.

“Everyone, toward the Gifted! Move!” shouted Tau’s father, and the Ihagu beat a hasty retreat, running to the grouping of women in black robes near the cliffs.

“Incredible,” Jabari said, pointing to the Ingonyama. “He’s incredible.”

As kids, they would play at being Ingonyama, and Tau hadn’t forgotten Jabari’s heartbreak when Lekan, catching them at it, taunted his younger brother with the truth. Jabari’s blood, like that of all Petty Nobles and lower castes, was too weak to enrage.

“Faster!” said Aren, yanking on Tau’s gambeson.

They were near enough to the Gifted that Tau could see them, though not well. There were eight of them, in their traditional coal-black and flowing robes, and they were guarded by a ring of warriors. The Gifted had their hoods up, and the gold necklaces they all wore shimmered with light from the hamlet’s guttering fires.

Having reached a measure of safety, Aren’s men let their exhaustion take hold. Some dropped to their knees, and one scrawny Ihagu sat on the ground, staring at nothing. The man beside him had his sword up, as if expecting his companions to turn on him.

Tau sought out the Ingonyama. He was there, in what was left of Daba, destroying all he faced. Around him, his Indlovu dealt death like it was a choreographed dance. They, along with the Ingonyama, were the Chosen’s most devastating fighters.

Tau glanced at Jabari, who had found water and was drinking, spilling much of it. It was hard to believe that nothing more than a test and time separated the optimistic young Noble from being a full-blooded Indlovu. Jabari would test soon, and if he passed, he’d become an initiate of their citadel, train for three cycles, then go to war as one of them.

Tau’s father wanted the Lessers’ equivalent for him. He wanted Tau to test for the Ihashe, train at the closer of the two fighting schools reserved for Lessers, and serve in the military, just like he had. Aren’s service was what made it possible for him, a Low Common, to lead their fief’s Ihagu.

Before Tau was born, his father had trained to be an Ihashe and had fought as one, serving the military’s mandatory six cycles. It was in his final cycle of service that he met and fell in love with Imani Tafari, a beautiful, strong-willed High Common. He wooed her, and with his service complete, they ran away to Kerem, to escape her father’s wrath at the poor match.

In Kerem, Aren’s Ihashe background was valuable and he was made second-in-command of Umbusi Onai’s Ihagu. His wife did even better, landing a position in the keep.

Tau was born soon after, but in the first few cycles of his life, Imani grew weary of living like a Common. She left Aren. She left Tau too.

With the woman he loved lost to him, Aren gave himself over to two things: raising Tau and being the best fighter in the fief. In time, he came to lead the Ihagu, and when Jabari was old enough, the umbusi asked Aren to train him.

After Lekan, her firstborn, failed his testing, she couldn’t afford to hire an Indlovu teacher for Jabari. Tau’s father, though a large step down from an Indlovu, was the next best thing. Aren accepted without hesitation. Teaching Jabari meant he’d have time to train Tau as well.

Tau knew it was the best Aren could do to give him a solid start toward a good future, but in a burning hamlet, surrounded by the dead and dying, he was having a difficult time believing there was anything good about the violent path his father had prepared for him.

Zuri would have sucked her teeth, rolling her eyes at him. Since becoming a handmaiden, she had little time and less patience for Tau’s bouts of self-pity. Still, a smile would have followed the eye roll, and that would make everything better. She always made everything better, he thought, as a horn sounded across the flats, snatching him away from her memory and returning him to the nightmare of Daba.

At the far edge of the hamlet, a hedena held a horn. He blew it again, three short blasts followed by a longer one, and Tau prayed it was a call to retreat. Something felt wrong, though. It was the man beside the horn blower.

“What is it?” asked Jabari, startling Tau. He hadn’t heard him approach.

“The man beside the one blowing the horn,” Tau said. “I think that’s their inkokeli.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s tall, almost the height of a Petty Noble, and well built. He’s wearing more than they usually do, and he’s carrying one of those bone spears. He’s… he’s burned, not just cursed. It looks like he’s been through a fire. Half his face is a ruin.”

“They aren’t leaving.”

Jabari was right. They weren’t. They were doing the opposite.

The hedeni, hearing the horn’s notes, came together but did not rush the barricade or the military men facing them. As one, they attacked the Enraged Ingonyama, ignoring the fighters around him.

“Stop them, Amara!” the Gifted nearest to Tau said to another black-robed woman.

The one named Amara lifted her hands, aiming past Tau at the charging hedeni. “They’re too far. It’ll splash,” she said.

“Try, damn you!” said the first Gifted, and Amara did.

Energy, like pulsing waves of heat, began to radiate from her fingers, thickening as it flew out and away. Enervation, Tau thought with wonder, before the edge of it struck him and the world disappeared.

VICTORY

Once, when he was younger, Tau climbed down the cliffs of Kerem to the beach below. He was with several other boys, and one of them dared him to go into the ocean, up to his waist. He said no and they called him a coward.

Tau made it four strides in and, with the water swirling around his knees, was swept off his feet and dragged out.

He was sucked under, pummeled and crushed by the ocean’s fury. He lived only because it was low tide and the water so close to the beach was shallow. The other boys had made a chain of arms to reach him, pulling him from the churning swell.

Being blasted by the Gifted felt like drowning in the ocean. It was as if Tau’s body was being dashed to pieces while the world around him warped and spun, and when the spinning stopped, things got worse.

Tau saw Daba, but everything was different. The colors had been torn away, leaving the hamlet, earth, and sky in shades of gray. An unnatural wind buffeted him, shrieking, burying the other sounds, while impenetrable mists obscured anything farther than twenty strides away.

Tau could see what had to be the other men who had been standing near him, but he couldn’t make sense of what he saw. The men, all in varying degrees of distress, were glowing with golden light. Tau looked down at himself. He was glowing too, and the glow had attracted something from the mists.

The creature was hidden and indistinct, but Tau could see more than enough. It moved in a lurching run on two feet, its balance aided by club-like hands on arms so long they could touch the ground. It had a flat face, red eyes, and a slavering mouth, and its skin seemed diseased.

The monster had Tau in its crimson gaze and roared. Tau couldn’t make himself move, and it came for him, careening out of the mists, reaching for him with misshapen hands. Tau’s legs gave out, and he opened his mouth to scream, fell and kept falling, through the ground, beyond the mists, beyond its grasp.

Pulling in air, ash, and the stench of blood, Tau reeled. He was on his knees, his mind on fire as fear unlike anything he’d ever known thundered through him. He felt warm wetness soak his trews and soiled himself. He didn’t care, couldn’t care. It was enough not to collapse into the battle-churned muck.

The men around him were similarly affected, and from the corner of his eye, Tau saw that many of the hedeni were also down.

“Tau?” It was his father.

“Da?” Tau said.

“Be at ease. It’ll pass. It’ll pass.”

Tau’s head pounded, but he looked to the Gifted anyway. Amara was still pushing out the wave of twisted energy. His father had pulled him out of the way and, Tau realized, he’d done it just in time. Amara’s wave of enervation had forced Tau’s soul into the underworld, where one of its demons had almost gotten him.

His head was a muddle, but Tau thought he understood. The Gifted was trying to disable enough of the hedeni to allow the Ingonyama to flee. Her efforts weren’t enough. She’d missed too many with her powers, and the Ingonyama, bleeding from a hundred cuts, found two attackers taking the place of each one he killed.

“I can’t hit more of them,” Amara said. “I can’t!”

“He has to drop the enraging,” the other Gifted said, “or Nsia dies.”

The Gifted needn’t have worried. The Ingonyama bellowed, killed another man, and stepped back, and then there were two flashes of light. The first flared around his body, and when it vanished, so did the effects of the enraging. The man shrank into himself, diminishing in height, bulk, and strength.

The second flash of light came from farther up the flats, in the half-closed doorway of one of the abandoned homes. As if waiting for this, the horn blower fired off two sharp blasts and a group of hedeni made for the house.

The ones who remained finished off the Ingonyama. He was stabbed by spear and hatchet. They opened his belly, then cut his head from his shoulders and held it aloft.

Amara had tears in her eyes and the Gifted woman beside her cursed, raising her hands to the sky. Her robes fell back from her wrists and Tau heard the dragon roar.

It circled, the Gifted twitched her fingers, and, blowing fire, the dragon dove for the hedeni who were running for the home. The slower among them died in the inferno as the beast careened past, but the rest made it, went inside the home, and came out with what they sought. The hedeni had captured a Gifted.

“Nsia!” the Gifted communing with the dragon shouted.

Nsia, being dragged from the building, pulled something from her robes that glinted. It was a knife. There were too many for her to fight off, but it still surprised Tau when she didn’t try.

Instead, she reversed her hold on the blade and made to plunge it into her chest, but one of her attackers was too quick. He slammed a spear into her arm and the knife fell from her deadened fingers. She tried to fight then, mouth open to scream, but one of the hedeni struck her across the temple, she went limp, and they carried her off.

They rushed her toward the warlord with the burned face, and Tau checked the skies. The dragon was turning for another pass but wouldn’t make it in time. The horn blower, standing beside the warlord, lifted his instrument and blew a final note, and the hedeni retreated, ending the raid on Daba more suddenly than it had begun.

A few of the Chosen sent up a cheer. Most of the townspeople were safe, the Ihagu had held until the real military arrived, and, once again, the Chosen had beaten back their enemy. The cheer was almost loud enough to drown out the sounds of choking.

It was one of the Gifted. Not the one who had skimmed Tau with her enervating blast and not the one directing the dragon. This Gifted had stood quiet and still, surrounded by soldiers, and far from combat. She was convulsing and coughing up blood, her skin bubbling and bursting. It looked like she was being torn to pieces from the inside out. It looked like what had happened to the hedena Jabari had captured and questioned.

A soldier took hold of her and, with tenderness, helped her to the ground. The other soldiers tightened the circle around her, blocking Tau’s view. He could still hear, though. He could hear her dying, and he started toward them, thinking to help, when a hand fell on his shoulder.

“No,” his father said. “That’s Gifted business.”

“She’s dying.”

The choking Gifted had gone quiet.

“Come,” his father said. “We won.”