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His men murmured behind him. The noise of catapults crashing into Ashfall’s courtyard sounded at their backs. The time for ambivalence was over. Either he convinced the Companions to return, or he accepted their direction.
He’d already learned that the First Oralist shared little of her thoughts or her plans. She was used to traveling without a company of soldiers at her back, unwilling to justify her actions, but something about her certainty spoke to Khashayar. Convinced him to heed her counsel.
“We must go,” she said now. “The Claim will cover us all. The risk is worth it.”
With no further argument, he signaled to the men behind him. They moved into position. He squeezed past Wafa, gestured at the Companions.
“I’ll go first with two of my men. Follow us once we are clear.”
The sound of the Claim filled the tunnel, washing the dankness from it, wrapping around their senses, its notes as close and familiar as if the men were voicing it themselves. When Khashayar and his soldiers had eased out of the tunnel, Arian and Sinnia followed with Wafa, the rest of their escort at their back. The Claim rose around them, strong and sweet, yet oddly hollow, a breeze blowing over plains of fertile scrubland. Their party moved across the grass, cocooned inside the Claim, the soft words blowing across the group of soldiers who kept watch at the rear of the Nineteen’s army. Military men, professional and well-trained, alert to sounds and movement around them, their camp orderly and silent.
Khashayar tallied numbers, noted the count and caliber of weaponry, made sharp-eyed assessments of the men waiting to attack Ashfall from the west. The rearguard consisted of two hundred men. In each small group was a runner, positioned to receive messages from the soldiers yet to arrive. The entire vanguard consisted of no more than a thousand men. When spread out in a line against the plains, they had seemed ten times that number. Or perhaps the One-Eyed Preacher had used his sorcery to demoralize the defenders of Ashfall.
He counted the brushfires along their encampment. They lit the faces of small groups, though most of the men had covered the lower half of their faces with their neck scarves, in the custom of their people. He noted the looseness of their robes as a weakness—not what he would have chosen to wear as armor into battle. His own men wore leather armor that closely conformed to their bodies, their weapons at their waists, shields slung over their backs. The Nineteen may have been well-fortified, but Khashayar perceived disadvantages the Zhayedan could exploit.
As they crept ahead with utmost stealth, he considered sending a message by hawk to convey his discoveries to Arsalan, the commander of the Black Khan’s army. But too many of the tribal herders who made up the Rising Nineteen had cast their glances at the sky, waiting for such a signal to give away the enemy’s position. As he scanned the perimeter for a possible ambush, he noticed when two soldiers in each group raised their torches, the signal he had been waiting for.
He held up his hand to silence all movement. The Companions came to a halt, the First Oralist at his side, the Claim a near-silent murmur from her mouth. They were no more than fifty feet from the rearguard of the Nineteen. Two of the soldiers glanced in their direction.
The breeze that brushed the grasslands whipped against their faces, forcing them to turn away.
Khashayar’s smile was grim. He knew his duty was to escort the Companions to Timeback, but his mind was racing with other possibilities. With the First Oralist’s use of the Claim, perhaps they could strike against the rearguard and strike hard—hard enough to gain Ashfall another night’s reprieve.
Before the First Oralist could answer the question in his eyes—or before he could act on his own—a chant began in the Nineteen’s camp. The soldiers beat against the ground with their torches in an accompanying rhythm. The chant was meant to terrorize the citizens of Ashfall, but Khashayar was mystified by the meaning of the words they spoke. They offered it in the High Tongue. As an elite commander, he was literate enough to understand.
“Over this are Nineteen.”
Over what? What did their name signify? He lowered his arm in a signal and began to move again, letting the words sweep over the night. The First Oralist’s continuous murmur of the Claim dimmed any fear he might have felt at the chant.
Over this are Nineteen.
He glanced back at his men to ensure that their course was steady. They moved with precision, a line of warriors determined to protect the Companions and the boy, weapons in hand, eyes focused on the soldiers who should have seen their movements in the open but whose heads remained turned away.
Though the temptation to strike was great, Khashayar bided his time. He would get the Companions to safety, and then he would persuade the First Oralist of the merits of his plan.
They stole across the grass, their movements sleek and their footing sure. None looked away from the Nineteen, waiting for the silence to break, prepared at any moment for discovery.
But under the steady flow of the First Oralist’s words, they made their way to the hillock and dipped down the other side. Now they were positioned on a twenty-foot dune that loomed above the Nineteen. Khashayar made a rapid calculation and was convinced: if the First Oralist used the Claim to shield them, he and his men could eliminate the rearguard.
She would caution him, he knew. Ten against two hundred. But he’d seen the power of the Claim.
Still, he had to consider the step that would come after a surprise attack. News of the First Oralist’s routing of the One-Eyed Preacher at the Messenger Gate had spread rapidly through the ranks of the Zhayedan. She was a weapon they could wield. If she remained on their side. Angering her for a limited victory could mean losing her assistance entirely.
Too, the First Oralist had made calculations of her own. She wanted the horses the soldiers closest to them had grouped at the rear of their camp—horses whose finely shaped heads were the mark of the region’s thoroughbreds. The horses could take them some distance farther west, though they lacked the stamina for the journey through the heart of the Rub Al Khali desert. At some point, the Companions would need to trade the thoroughbreds for camels.
But surely he could use that to his advantage. He would give the First Oralist her horses, if she agreed to his strike. If she helped him destroy the Nineteen’s entire vanguard. He glanced over at her, expecting to find her attention focused on the horses. Instead, her gaze had followed his, and now she watched him closely, as if she could read his thoughts. Could she? He frowned at the thought.
“First Oralist—”
She spoke to him kindly, her cloak thrown back, the breeze taking the long strands of her hair, so that it whipped at his skin, soft as Marakand silk. “I don’t have the power you seek.”
“You defeated the One-Eyed Preacher at the walls.”
“A momentary respite.”
Something in the air shifted. The chanting slowed. Deepened. Soldiers in the camp began to move. Spyglasses scanned the dunes.
Arian and Khashayar ducked down. The murmur of the Claim began again, this time augmented by Sinnia, while the boy, Wafa, crouched at their sides, his blue eyes wide with fear.
Arian shifted closer to the horses. His courtesy set aside, Khashayar’s hand shot out to clamp down on her wrist.
She turned back to him, pinned him with eyes that seemed to see everything, things he didn’t want her to know.
But it was the boy who wrenched Khashayar’s grip from her wrist. A hard smile touched Khashayar’s lips. The Hazara boy freed by the Companions had a blind devotion to them now. Nothing could rout him from their sides, or from their self-appointed Audacy.
He watched as the First Oralist took the boy’s hand and pressed a kiss to his curls.
The Talisman’s prejudice spilled over into his thoughts. How could the First Oralist of Hira kiss a child of the Hazara, a people too weak to defend themselves, instead of aligning herself with much worthier allies?
She answered his unspoken question. “We are all equals. We all belong to the One.” Then, moving out of his reach, she skirted closer, lower down the ridge to where the horses were pastured. “If I could help you, I would, Khashayar. You’ll have to learn to trust me.” She nodded at the city in the distance, a glimmer of lights beyond the army’s encampment. The sounds of battle were fainter far from the walls, yet still audible. The clash of steel, the destruction sowed by catapults that creaked under the weight of their projectiles, the clean whistle of arrows slicing through bursts of noise. Brilliant dots of fire flickered along the walls.
“I would understand if you and your men chose to return to make your stand at Ashfall. Just as Sinnia and I must fulfill our purpose.”
She held his gaze, her own astonishingly clear.
Go with her, the Black Khan had said. Do not leave her side. Whoever stands against you, whoever you must destroy, your foremost duty is to bring the Sana Codex to Ashfall. No matter what the First Oralist may tell you. No matter where she tries to take it. Do otherwise, and you will be party to the destruction of this empire.
Khashayar’s fingers curled into his palm. He moved to give the First Oralist cover, signaling to his men. Crawling crabwise across the hill in their descent, he felt the verses of the Claim attain an urgency. A harshness to stand against words that had no meaning for him, despite their pounding pulse.
Over this are Nineteen.
His armor was brushed by spiky tufts of grass that pricked at the skin of his throat. The breeze summoned by the Claim blew the smoke from the Nineteen’s fires away from their small party back into the camp, where soldiers could be heard coughing. He gripped his sword, sliding sideways. His men remained in position at the crest. Two of his monitored their progress. The First Oralist had also motioned to the boy to wait for her return.
Now Khashayar and the Companions inched their way closer to the camp with the horses, each increment of movement scrutinized in advance.
Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten. So close now that the horses’ ears pricked forward, hearing their subtle movements beneath the Claim. Sinnia’s use of the Claim broke off.
“If the Silver Mage was with us, he could calm the horses for us.”
She picked up her use of the Claim before Arian could answer, though Arian’s shoulders tightened at the words. She changed her intonation. The Claim became more secret. When Khashayar looked up to measure their progress, his head was within kicking distance of the enemy’s boots.
He rolled away. The soldier didn’t stir, his gaze fixed on the stars.
Then, like a wraith trailing clouds of mist, the First Oralist flowed to her feet, her graceful movements matched by Sinnia’s. She stroked the mane of one of the sequestered mares, murmuring the Claim in its ear. The horse shifted to nuzzle her shoulder, and Khashayar saw that the mares were linked together, held by a single lead. He motioned to the Companions to retreat, wrapping the lead around his wrist. His powerful body nudged the lead mare up the slope, his sharp eyes trained on the soldiers guarding the horses.
Still no movement, no awareness.
But the pace up the dune was perilously slow, the horses kicking up sand with the fussy placement of their hooves. He swore to himself, sweat breaking out on his forehead. His side was exposed to the Rising Nineteen, and he’d been forced to sheathe his sword. The horses were moving too slowly, but a signal from the First Oralist warned him against careless haste.
When the Companions reached the crest, the tension in his muscles lessened. The First Oralist took the lead rein from his hands. He fell back, counting the mares. They wouldn’t need them all. A dozen would be enough; the rest could be repastured. He waited until twelve of the horses had been led down the far side of the hill before he moved to sever the lead.
But when he slid between two of the horses, he made the mistake of choosing a fierce young stallion. The freed horse reared up. When its forelegs crashed down again, they narrowly missed his head. He rolled out from under the stallion’s hooves, but his unexpected movement incited panic.
The stallion wheeled, nipping the haunches of the mare he was tied to. The mares on the upslope screamed, the piercing noise cutting through the sharp-edged notes of the Claim. The mirage of emptiness faded. The soldiers closest to the hillock sprang to their feet, swords ripped from their scabbards.
Khashayar whirled to face them, even as his archers began to cut down his pursuers.
“Run!” he shouted to the Companions. “Leave the field to us!”
He made his stand at the top of the hill, sword in one hand, dagger in the other, archers at either side. Without the protection of the Claim, his men couldn’t hold against so many. They were cut down on the sands where they stood. Khashayar’s quick glance down at the Companions found them encircled, the horses they had stolen recaptured by the Nineteen.
“Hold!”
A powerful voice shouted the command. The Rising Nineteen went still on both sides of the hill. Taking advantage of the distraction, Khashayar plunged down the slope. When none of the soldiers attacked, he pushed the Companions behind him, his sword poised in one hand.
A member of the Nineteen stepped forward, his dark eyes gleaming under the hood of a dusty blue burnoose. He threw back his hood to show his face. An older man with rich brown skin, the hair at his temples streaked with gray that matched his beard, his posture one of a man used to having his orders obeyed. When he loosened his cloak to show them his armor, Khashayar caught his breath.
Then he counted the number of soldiers who stood behind the man.
3 (#ulink_22f8391c-ef6f-5545-afab-7d598f40e58d)
THE ZHAYEDAN GATE STOOD FIRM THROUGH THE NIGHT. THE TEERANDAZ archers of Ashfall held it, knowing that the Cataphracts, the army’s shock troops, were needed at the Emissary Gate. Cassandane, the Captain of the Teerandaz, had used her archers sparingly. She was waiting to target the sappers, who gathered at the southern wall to chip away at the foundations that fortified the Zhayedan Gate. When a line of sappers advanced, Cassandane moved archers to either side of her position.
A line to meet a line, a tactic Arsalan had taught her. She glanced down at the courtyard. The Commander of the Zhayedan was with his soldiers, cutting through the chaos with instructions to fortify defenses at all three of the city’s gates. He knew his soldiers to a man. He knew the range of weapons stored in the capital’s armory. Best of all, he knew when and where to disperse them. As he moved among the Cataphracts, his presence imparted calm. Without a commander like Arsalan, the city would have been lost.
A jarring noise. The gate shuddered so heavily that the ground under Cassandane’s feet trembled. A Zhayedan catapult had destroyed the first battering ram; now the Talisman had brought another. The men who urged it forward were giants, heavy with muscle and just as brutally armored. The Talisman had been warned against the skill of Cassandane’s archers. There were no obvious openings for her archers to target.
We will find them, she thought. First the sappers, then the brutes behind the ram.
She raised a hand, and the archers fired two swift strikes, their movements so rapid they blurred. The first was aimed at the soldiers who gave the sappers cover. They needed to be unseated, to open up the real targets. The second aimed at the sappers; this was the killing strike.
A return volley was aimed at the archers above the gate. But the Teerandaz were shielded by a defensive line of their own: Zhayedan soldiers whose lives were committed to them. With the first break in fire, the soldiers knelt and the Teerandaz fired again, this time with silver-tipped arrows aimed at the men who approached the gate at a run, their battering ram held aloft.
The arrows were aimed at their unprotected heads. If the soldiers survived the blows, they would try to shield their heads with their hands. The poison at the tips of the arrows would spread no matter how they tried to protect themselves, and the ram would tumble to the ground.
And so it proved.
The next rain of Teerandaz arrows carried fire. The giant wooden ram sparked and blazed to life as it burned. The assault on the gate had failed. Cassandane held up a hand. The archers waited, poised, as their captain chose another target.
Several hours later, Cassandane made a quick detour to the Black Khan’s war room to meet with the army’s commanders. Arsalan gave her a welcoming nod and signaled to the others to report. When it was her turn, she was quick and concise. Her actions should have earned her praise. But the tension in the room erupted into low-voiced murmuring, even as Arsalan commended her strategy.
“Well done, Captain Cassandane. How many archers did you lose?”
“None, Commander.”
The murmurs of displeasure intensified. She caught the assessing glance that Maysam, Captain of the Cataphracts, shot at her. He’d wanted her to support his maneuvers to defend the Emissary Gate. She’d refused, considering the attempt on the Zhayedan Gate the greater threat. No doubt that decision had cost her Maysam’s favor.
“It won’t last,” she went on, ignoring the mutinous whispers. “The Talisman have numbers on their side. We’ll need more than archers to hold.”
Maysam shifted into her line of sight. He was six and a half feet tall, his body heavy with muscle, though for a man of such bulk, he moved with deceptive swiftness, his mind agile, his calculations complex. He was a commander of fierce ability, given to weighing the odds. Beyond these talents, he was skilled with weaponry—the sword, the axe, the fire-lance, the mace—which made him the right man to lead shock troops into battle. But more than a decade older than Cassandane, he viewed her rank as an insult to his soldiers, some nearly as skilled as her own.
Nearly. That was the critical difference.
“You have two dozen Zhayedan defending your women. No others can be spared.”
Women, not archers. An unsubtle insult that elicited a soft chuckle from the Zhayedan’s commanders. She ignored it, keeping her gaze fixed on Arsalan. She could handle the politics of command without his help, but she wondered at the toll the battle might be taking on him. He’d moved between the walls and the courtyard throughout the night, neither still nor rushed, his face still streaked with smoke from his encounter with the One-Eyed Preacher. In the time that she’d been at the gate, he’d overseen the evacuation of the palace and fortified the inner defenses.
And then at a critical moment, Arsalan had been absent, summoned to the Black Khan’s chambers. When he’d returned, he’d been distracted. But when the One-Eyed Preacher had spread his terror at the wall, Arsalan’s attention had refocused: The Black Khan’s half-brother, Darius, had delivered the Bloodprint to the Preacher. And, in the struggle to reclaim it, the Princess of Ashfall had been killed.
The murder of the Princess had hardened Arsalan’s determination to vanquish the enemy.
Still, Cassandane wondered now if all they were doing was holding off inevitable defeat. To the east and south, the siege had set in. And from the west, another army approached.
The Companions had given them hope against these odds, but they had since abandoned the city. Of the allies that remained, Cassandane wasn’t sure she trusted them: a stranger known as the Assassin, and two of the Mages of Khorasan. But what she truly feared was the use of a power she couldn’t comprehend, like the thunder that had cracked the city walls.
Were they fighting today only to die tomorrow?
Arsalan met her gaze, perhaps guessing at her thoughts. His dark hair was matted with sweat, yet his physical presence was imposing. He was not as strongly built as Maysam, but Cassandane was in no doubt of which man she wanted at her back.
Now he stood at the center of the war room, radiating a strength of will that calmed her in a room full of men she had learned to think of as adversaries.
“You’ve done well, Captain.” His attention shifted to Maysam, whose giant hands were braced on the table as he studied the battle plan drawn up by the Black Khan’s cartographer. “How long can we hold the Emissary Gate?”
“With defensive maneuvers, at least another day. The Silver Mage’s ruse is what gave us that day. But if we don’t take action, we’ll lose the eastern gate. What of your plan to ride out?”
Cassandane waited to see if Arsalan would correct Maysam about the reason for the Silver Mage’s actions. He’d called the loya jirga in good faith—the Black Khan had betrayed him. The Khan had ordered Cassandane to fire on the loya jirga, despite the First Oralist’s pleas to allow time to achieve a truce. But Cassandane had known, just as Arsalan had known, that there would be no better chance to take out the Talisman leadership. And as the Silver Mage had made his safe return, Cassandane had nothing to regret. She would make the same choice again, dishonorable as it had been.
She saw the pained acknowledgment of that truth in Arsalan’s velvet-black eyes. Her gaze lingered for a moment before she forced herself to look away.
The noise of battle was heavy in the air. Boulders landing in the inner courtyard, shouts of men under attack, masonry crumbling to dust. Smoke curled over the battlements. And she knew the men were wondering at the absence of their Khan, a matter none dared comment on to Arsalan. Not even Maysam was so bold.
“What action would you take?” Arsalan now asked the leader of the Cataphracts. “An offensive sortie?” It was something Arsalan had planned on himself, once he’d completed his check of the defenses. But from the subtle shift of his stance, Cassandane thought the Commander had reconsidered.
Any such sortie would require the Zhayedan to open the Emissary Gate or to disclose the existence of the Zhayedan’s secret sally ports—a series of gates they used to ambush their enemies when their numbers were evenly matched. To pursue either course now would be to yield to the Talisman the very advantage they’d been seeking. But it could be that now was the moment to expose those advantages, before time ran out to exploit them.
“Yes.” Maysam pointed to a valley east of the Talisman’s position. “We position archers on the high ground to either side of this valley, then draw them into an ambush.”
Cassandane stepped closer to Arsalan, not stopping to weigh her words. “Such a course would be disastrous. The Talisman would overrun the gate to pick us off one by one, or they would discover the vulnerability of our inner defenses. If we were able to seal the Emissary Gate before they penetrated through, our numbers would be too small to break through to the valley. Our archers would be killed before they could gain cover. Even if we succeeded, we would only draw in the smallest portion of their army. We’d run out of ammunition before we made any gains. We have to hold our defenses.”
“You sound frightened, Cassandane.”
As he did so often to diminish her command, Maysam omitted her rank.
“Not frightened. Pragmatic.” She straightened her shoulders, glanced at Arsalan again. “Without our archers at the gates, Ashfall is doomed against the Talisman.”
An angry rush of protest in response to Cassandane’s assertion that the city could be held only by a contingent of female archers. The Black Khan’s Nizam had nurtured a quiet revolt against the presence of women in the army, though the Khan himself maintained that the Teerandaz formed a vital arm of their defense. She wondered now, in his absence, if that quiet revolt was gaining strength and would make itself known. Cassandane knew she’d been unwise to challenge these commanders, to make them seem incapable, no matter her private thoughts. But with the evidence right before them, would they risk the future of Ashfall to prove themselves superior to the women who fought at their side?
“You think well of yourself,” Maysam said. “But the Zhayedan have been fighting Ashfall’s wars since long before you were born. We are not in the habit of hiding behind women. Not even those who wear Teerandaz armor.”
