Chapter 5 Malini #4
She could see only the barest glimpse of Mahesh, still upright in his chariot, gripping on tightly as his horse careened forward, trampling through the press of foot soldiers ahead of her.
Before her and around her, men ran back and forth without direction, some of them burning, the air filled with an awful char and screaming.
Malini thought of a line from the Book of Mothers, a line that spoke of holy fire, sentient and twisting and writhing, its many forked tongues, its wings of flame, did turn hands upon the yaksa, and reduce them to ash, and did not rest, until everything lay dead in its path—
Malini looked sharply back at the camp. She heard distant cries. Half her army remained behind. Someone in the camp would surely have noticed by now what was happening. They would send more men, and swiftly.
She could not allow that. Not against this. They needed to retreat. They needed to think.
The chariot jolted. The horse was panicking, rearing up no matter how her charioteer tried to soothe it, his own hands trembling.
It jolted again, and once more. Malini was thrown roughly from her feet and against the side of the chariot.
She looked at Raziya and saw the woman on her knees, clutching her own skull. Her hand was bloodied.
“Raziya,” she yelled, alarmed.
The woman’s head shot up. Eyes sharp, still.
“It’s no more than a cut,” she said crisply. “Get up.”
She grasped Raziya hard by the arm. “Down,” she ordered, as loud and sharp as she could. “We’ll be safer on foot.”
Raziya hooked her bow at her back and nodded grimly, grasping Malini in return. The two of them leapt.
Overhead, fire shot through the air. A Dwarali woman’s horse was struck by it—Malini heard the awful noise of a dying animal, and the crash as another distant chariot overturned.
Raziya stumbled back, dragged aside by one of her women’s hands, swearing as a soldier ran past her, racing away from the battle in utter panic.
And then Malini saw the horse leashed to her chariot fall, and the charioteer slump, an arrow through his throat.
She saw her own chariot tip toward her, with all its wood and metal, its great spoked wheels, the sheer weight of it.
Raziya was out of range, Malini was almost sure. But Malini was not.
The chariot was going to crush to her to death.
Pressure, against her body. Her feet going out from under her. She had no time to even be afraid, as a soldier shoved her bodily forward, propelling her away from the chariot.
She heard a terrible noise. The crunch of bones. She heard his breath punch out of him with the smallest sound, more surprise than agony. And then he went still.
His body was beneath the chariot. Only his head and one outstretched arm exposed.
He was dressed in Parijati white and gold.
He was one of her own soldiers. Numbly, even as the sound of screaming and fire filled her ears, she removed his helm.
His eyes were open, his mouth parted. The hair bound in a high bun, away from his face, was knotted.
A priest’s hair. A priest’s face.
Another priest, she thought with a kind of hysterical surprise. By the mothers, had all priests of the mothers taken up armor and blades? Why had one chosen to try and kill her, and another chosen to die for her?
“Empress.” Raziya barked. Her voice was ragged, frayed in a way Malini had never heard before. “Empress Malini. We must move. Come on now.”
She would. Just not yet. Not yet.
She found herself leaning closer to the priest. Turning his outstretched arm over. It was partially bare, the sleeve of his tunic ripped. She saw marks on his arm—Saketan script, blurred ink in skin—
A hand gripped her by the shoulder, hauling her up.
The guardswomen had surrounded her, and two soldiers had joined them, sabers drawn protectively.
Their horses were gone. She tried not to think what had become of the poor creatures.
Raziya looked down at her, face bloodied and pale, her gaze focused on Malini, so fierce that it forced Malini to focus on her in return.
“Empress, we must go,” said Raziya. “Right now.”
“Return to the camp, Lady Raziya,” Malini heard herself saying.
She hardly knew her own voice. It was raw, scraped thin as if she had been screaming.
“I must call for our retreat.” Why had Mahesh not called for them to do so already?
Why were her men still trying to fight? “A conch. I need a conch.”
“Empress,” one of the soldiers choked out. “If. If you fall…”
“Empress, what can you do here?” a Dwarali woman demanded. “That is—that is the mothers’ fire—”
She ignored those voices. With some difficulty, she raised her eyes, looking upon the immediate dangers surrounding her: the dying horses, the dead man beside her, the soldiers and guardswomen watching her wide-eyed.
The fire, leaping from body to body, like a thing with mind and hunger and a mortal’s cruelty.
She watched, with a kind of glassy numbness, as a man was swallowed whole by flame.
As he fell to his knees, and then what remained of him fell further still, the fire leaving him as swiftly as it had arrived.
Raziya was gripping her shoulder. Calling her name, louder and louder.
“If you will not get me a conch,” Malini said deliberately to the people around her, “then I will get one.”
She would have to move between panicked horses and panicked men in armor, but there in the distance she could see a charioteer with a conch at his hip, frozen on his war chariot, staring at fire as it fell. The commander he must have been carrying was likely long gone—lost in the crush.
“Watch for my safety,” she said to Raziya’s guardswomen.
She stood, and Raziya’s grip tightened momentarily before releasing.
“Empress,” she said. But Malini did not want to be stopped or cajoled.
She strode forward, fast, then faster. And then she was running, her hair streaming around her, her saber clanking against her hip, a useless weight.
“You heard the empress.” Raziya’s voice, distant now, but steely. “Defend her.”
She ducked as an arc of flame rippled close enough for her to feel the heat against her cheek; tripped over a wounded man before finding her footing and crossing the ground.
One of the High Prince’s men was ahead of her, on horseback.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw an arrow go into his chest. Saw him fall.
Saw the shadows of one guardswoman, and another, circle around her. She kept on running.
The chariot was ahead of her. Malini, shaking with anger and determination, grasped its edge and dragged herself inside.
“Your conch,” she demanded, holding her hand out to the charioteer.
He fumbled for it and placed it into her hands.
“Turn back,” she commanded. “Lady Raziya needs our assistance, and then we must return to camp.”
“E-Empress.” His lips were almost bloodless. Hands trembling. “That was—mothers’ fire—”
“Turn. Back,” she said deliberately.
“The horse,” he managed to say. “It may—”
“You have your command. Go.”
With a crack of his whip the chariot lurched forward, then to the side.
Back over the ground she’d run over. She saw Lady Raziya with ash upon her cheeks.
One of the guardswomen lay dead on the ground in front of her.
The chariot juddered, and Malini clutched the conch more tightly.
Swallowed her own breath. No more careful position in battle, swaddled by soldiers and cavalry and shields.
She was deep in the fray, the wind scouring her face, dust a harsh salt on her lips.
“Stop,” she commanded the charioteer, and he managed to tame his horse long enough to allow Lady Raziya to scramble on.
“Sahar,” Raziya said sharply. “Manvi, both of you, come with us.”
“We’ll follow, my lady,” Manvi said urgently, frantically urging the chariot forward with her hands—as if she could move its bulk to safety by sheer will alone. Sahar said, “Go, my lady.”
An arrow embedded itself in the ground to Raziya’s right. The horse reared.
“Steady,” Malini called out, as the charioteer held the reins—as if her order had any kind of power to change the course of what was happening around her.
Raziya went down to her knees, holding the chariot’s edge, swearing again.
And Malini ground her feet into the base of the chariot. And prayed she would not fall.
She tilted her head back. Brought the conch to her lips.
Three sharp, wailing calls punctured the air:
Retreat. Retreat. Retreat.