40. Chapter 40
Chapter forty
Keera
Blood dripped from both my saber and my short sword, making the stone beneath Daiti’s hooves sticky. If this was not enough to sate the desert, then there was no such quantity. Still, I pressed on, Aderyn at my side and the other lords at my back.
I hoped that Erix faced less resistance on his path up through the city. We had already faced down several squads of Calix’s men as we wove through the streets, leaping out from around corners and jumping down on us from above.
Even as the clan riders pressed forward bravely, I could feel them flagging. Fighting in tight quarters was brutal on horseback, and nothing like the open charges they faced in the plains. They were not accustomed to such battles—but the riders of Kelvadan would be.
We just had to find where Calix had them held.
I dispatched the last of the riders from our latest group of attackers with a brutal slash across the chest. He deserved it for the way he tugged on the reins of his stolen horse, making the creature snort in discomfort while her eyes rolled back in her head.
I reached out to yank the bit and bridle from the mare’s face and caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye.
A curtain twitched in a stone window, as if somebody within had chanced a glance out at the chaos.
My heart stuttered, despite the pounding of battle in my veins.
I had hoped to keep the people of Kelvadan out of this fight—the people I had given everything to feed only to end up selling them into the hands of a tyrant with my actions.
Those who had been in the city for the past months might know where to find the riders.
I jerked my chin at Aderyn and nodded at the home where I had seen the movement.
In the relative quiet after our last wave of battle, she dismounted, landing heavily on her feet in the street.
She grimaced and rubbed her lower back before steeling herself.
The action made me frown. Aderyn had managed the stress of battle well, but her discomfort seemed to be growing.
The sands of more than one hourglass were running.
I positioned myself between her and the street, and Elion pulled his horse up beside me. We both looked up and down the road, hoping to protect her and the civilians within from any unexpected attacks.
“Hello?” Aderyn knocked gently. “We promise we mean you no harm.”
Aderyn’s voice had never been soft, but something about its firmness was always comforting, and this time was no different. Her lack of pretense gave her the air of someone who could be trusted.
I glanced over my shoulder in time to see the door crack open, and to my utter surprise, a wide-eyed child looked out at Aderyn from waist height. She looked taken aback for a second, before dropping to a knee to be at a level with him.
“Where are your parents?”
He shook his head. “They’re riders. The bad king won’t let them come home.”
“You’re here by yourself?” I could tell Aderyn tried her best to hide the pain his words caused, but I didn’t miss the sudden tense of the muscles in her jaw and the scrunch of her brows.
A cracking echoed through my own chest. Another child left behind by his parents—although this time not by choice.
“Yes, but I sneak in to see my parents as often as I can, even when they tell me it’s dangerous.” The young boy seemed proud of himself.
“You see them? Where?” A tiny glimmer of hope cut through the concern in Aderyn’s voice.
“The bad king has them locked in one of the empty storehouses,” he explained. “But I’m small enough to crawl down one of the old grain shoots. They don’t guard them.”
“The grain storehouse by the baker who shapes his nut bread into triangles?” Aderyn asked.
Nobody knew this city and its people better than her.
The boy nodded. “The baker doesn’t have the nuts to make the bread anymore though.”
Aderyn reached out and patted the boy’s dark curls. “We’re going to go and get your parents. You bar this door and don’t answer it for anybody else, understood?”
The boy nodded gravely, as if he too were a rider taking an order from his commander. “Thank you for coming back.”
The words pierced me through the heart as he shut the door, and a scraping sound indicated that the boy had blocked the way with the heaviest furniture he could move. Aderyn stood and turned to face me, determination written into every line of her face.
“I know where they are.”
~
Daiti’s hooves clopped loudly against the stone streets, echoing through my skull, but we did not slow. Wind whipped my braid as we followed Aderyn and her piebald mare through the streets. A storehouse appeared at the end of the next street, surrounded by rows of Viltov’s soldiers.
They drew their swords as we came into view, but I already knew they would not be enough to stand up to the might of the clans. Not when Aderyn and I led the charge side by side. Not with the fire in my veins at the knowledge that riders I had once led were trapped behind their guard.
Daiti accelerated beneath me, his powerful muscles heaving as they propelled us forward, without me even giving him the command.
The first line of men fell before his hooves like thin desert grass in the face of a sandstorm.
Their screams filled the air, and I almost relished in the rush of violence—the desert’s magic seemed to dance both within me and around me at the bloodshed.
She was growing thirstier and more unhinged with every passing second.
A thud ran up my arm to my shoulder as I sliced into one defender, my blade striking bone. With my off hand, I used my short sword to bat away a stabbing spear.
As if its use tied me to its other half—and the man who wielded it—a shiver ran down the tether in my belly. Erix was fighting too.
The screams of the soldiers from Viltov died quickly, cut off in strangled gurgles as the clan riders tore through them. I didn’t even dismount, letting Daiti kick through the locked double doors of the storehouse.
I blinked at the sudden change in light as we entered, the air dark and musty within.
The sight that greeted my vision, though, was far grimmer than peaceful piles of grain.
Riders stood or slumped near the walls, each of them with heavy chains around their wrists and ankles.
Tattered clothes hung off their thin frames.
As Aderyn and I dismounted, though, they all managed to struggle to their feet. Aderyn wasted no time; she used the hilt of her saber to strike the shackles off the hands of the rider nearest her.
“Commander Aderyn,” he gasped, his eyes wide.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, the soft pain in her voice at odds with the decisiveness of her actions as she continued to free him from his bonds.
I followed her lead, gesturing for the rider nearest to me to hold out her hands. As the chains fell free, she rubbed at her wrists, and a spark in her eyes lit in the dim light of the room. It was as if just the barest hint of freedom had relit the hope within her.
I remembered how my ambivalence toward my own existence had been chased away just by the sound of Erix saying my name for the first time, and I understood. Hope was as stubborn as any desert scrub. It could look long dead, but give it a single drop of water, and it was ready to bloom anew.
The lords, who had followed us into the storehouse, also dismounted and began freeing riders.
The sound of broken chains falling to the ground filled the air, and it was one of the most beautiful things I had heard.
I hoped it was only a prelude to the symphony of the entire city celebrating its freedom from the tyranny of Calix.
As I found myself shoulder to shoulder with Aderyn, the last of the riders shaking out limbs numb from disuse, she raised her fist in the air.
“Riders! The time to retake our city is now! For months, I have dreamed of fighting by your side once more, and that day is finally here,” she proclaimed.
A murmur of excited apprehension ran through the riders, but one in the crowd spoke louder to be heard over the rest. “They took our swords alongside our horses! I would be willing to wring Calix’s neck with my bare hands, but I fear I would not make it that far without the protection of a blade.”
As agreement ran through the group, I raised my voice. “Then it is a good thing no self-respecting clansman rides into battle with fewer than three blades. While many regret they can only carry two swords at once, today, we will arm as many hands as possible.”
Part of me expected the clan lords behind me to bristle at the idea of giving away weapons to the riders of Kelvadan. Less than two years earlier, they had drawn blades against each other. Izumi, though, stepped forward without hesitation.
She pulled a long, curved knife from her belt, the handle wrapped in an ornament of twisting flames. Presenting it hilt first to the closest rider, she nodded sharply. “If sharing my blades will free the desert, I will give away every scrap of steel I own.”
Elion and Koen stepped forward next, and it was only a matter of moments before chatter filled the air as weapons were exchanged and supplies shared. The man who had taken Izumi’s blade held it up to examine, and his brows rose in appreciation.
“War brings strange tent fellows,” he observed.
“None who serve the Heart of the Desert are really that strange,” I argued.
He looked up from the blade, and his lips twisted in wry amusement. “I always considered myself to be a citizen of Kelvadan more than of the desert. But I suppose the city was wrought by her power, gifted to her chosen one.”
The mention of Kelvar caused my heart to stutter in my chest. The flame of hope that had grown within me stuttered at the reminder that simply defeating Calix would not be enough.
With the riders of Kelvadan beside us, we had a chance to eradicate him, but it would mean nothing if we could not take back the Heart and free Alyx from her eternal prison.
There was no time to waste.