And Temur saw the hordes of assassins, who must have attacked at dawnlight, swarming over the walls on ropes that still dangled there. These he killed at every turn, mostly with arrows. Bansh with her hooves and teeth shredded every one that came within striking distance of her, and Temur shot down those that would strike from afar.
His stolen quivers ran dry of arrows. He was groping for the hilt of the short sword when the mare turned and swung another quiver into his hands, the strap gripped between her teeth.
In surprise, Temur caught it. His surprise was not enough, though, to keep him from drawing an arrow from the quiver, nocking it, drawing, and loosing.
And again. And again.
* * *
Some of the raiders came on horseback. Fine Asitaneh horses, like the ones the two mounted men in the pass below Tsarepheth had ridden, stormed past in clusters of two or three, the men on their backs raining fiery arrows. So much burned, everywhere the arrows fell. More than should have, Samarkar thought. The flames seemed … virulent.
Sorcerous or not, flame was something she could cope with. She strode through the courtyard, the heat and winds of her wards gusting about her, and into those wards she pulled the properties of fire when she passed close to it. Heat, tumult, and the need to consume. No arrow that flew toward her survived, and in the burning dwellings she passed, the flames guttered and died.
Samarkar felt more than heard the cries. A white-house stood in flames; outside it, someone restrained a young girl who wept and whose arms waved wildly. An assassin whose indigo veil had slipped in the struggle was attempting to drag her away, while others waited with bows to shoot anyone who ran from the blazing building. Samarkar did not need an interpreter to tell her what Mami! meant.
Samarkar ran between scorched piles of once-homes and heaped and bloodied bodies. She pulled a burning stick from a fallen house as she passed, and advanced upon the men.
Suddenly, someone was there beside her, just beyond the wards. From the corner of her eye, she recognized the chunky form and barrel body of Brother Hsiung. Whether he had come for her or because of the child’s screaming she did not know. But as the assassin lifted the girl-child up and began to swing her around, Brother Hsiung entered the field like a stalking wolf and suddenly, effortlessly, took her from him.
The assassin sprawled on the ground, stunned for half a moment before he rocked up and rolled to his feet. In that moment, Samarkar hit him across the back of the head with her flaming club. She hit him twice more, for good measure. When she looked up again, she was surrounded by four dead or incapacitated assassins, and Brother Hsiung was thrusting the girl at her.
She tuned her wards so they would not burn the child, and grabbed her. A little thing, maybe eight summers, and some of them lean. Samarkar propped her on a hip and turned back to Hsiung.
He was running toward the burning house.
Samarkar cursed like a priest and ran after him, carrying the child, groping outward with all her strength to find the fire and draw it down.
* * *
They were winning, that was the hell of it. The assassins were each worth several of Tzitzik’s men, but there were not so many of them. And Temur, on Bansh’s back, was winning through to Hrahima and Tzitzik when the vast, unspeakable shadow passed over.
The mare froze like a rabbit; Temur would have sworn he felt her very hide chill. He cowered unintentionally, dropping an arrow, and twisted to look up.
Its wings blotted out the sky.
“Rukh,” he said, remembering. He could not see the end of it; it came and seemed to keep coming, and the wind of its passing swirled garbage from the packed earth, guttered flame, and blew his hair straight forward across his face. How can we fight that?
From the look on her feline face as she tipped her head back, Hrahima was thinking the same.
Tzitzik did not pause to think. She drew her strong hand back and hurled her silver-headed lance high, higher, so it should have glinted in the morning sun had not the rukh’s shadow eclipsed it. It peaked, though, and began to fall back, and Temur checked frantically to make sure he would not be under it.
Arrows.
He fumbled the bow, lifted it, and with his right hand checked the quiver. Three arrows left, and it would be like shooting cactus needles at a water buffalo. Like trying to shoot down a dragon. He drew one from the quiver anyway and fitted it to the string.
His good mare shivered under him. He drew his knees up, came to his feet on her broad back. He stood, arched his head back, and lifted the bow.
Not an impossible shot, not with his own bow. Just a horribly unlikely one. Here, with this alien weapon—who could say?
Temur drew the string back to his jaw and found his anchor point. At that moment, the rukh’s yellow eye looked straight at him. He saw clearly the indigo-veiled man it bore skyward, straddling its neck like the barrel of a mare.