Seven Sorcerers(57)
Khama sped away from the devastation, heading for the black roots of the nearest island. He stayed low to the seabed. Let them believe they have slain both Serpent and King this day.
Undutu wept and moaned, his fists dug into Khama’s fresh plumage. The black waters rushed by as the thunders of battle faded behind them.
The foot of an island loomed before them now, a blue-green mountain rising toward the air and sun. Khama followed the course of the underwater crag, planning to surface only when he had carried Undutu west of Ongthaia. Yet something drew his attention toward the southern end of the isle. Someone was calling his name. A familiar voice. He reversed direction, swimming fast as a shark toward the sound that was more than sound.
The sea floor sloped upward, erupting in a beach of golden sand. Once again Khama raised his head above the waves. This time the head and shoulders of Undutu rose behind it.
“Gods of Sea and Sky!” Undutu cried.
A handful of figures lay panting and groaning where surf met sand. Less than a dozen men had reached the shore under the power of their own arms and legs. Only one of them stood to greet the Feathered Serpent; the rest vomited seawater or lay senseless and bleeding.
“Khama!” shouted the caller. He grasped a blade of black iron etched with the Sun God’s sigil, which blazed in the sunlight.
“D’zan!” called Undutu.
Khama glided into the shallow water, where Undutu leaped from his back and embraced his fellow King. They stared across the waves, where less than a league from the shore the remnants of their routed fleets burned and sank. The sky was full of hovering dreadnoughts; throughout the battle they had held their concentric formation above Ongthaia.
Yet now another sound filled the air. The flapping of a thousand pairs of leathery wings. Flying lizards with gilded beaks descended from the center ring of sky-ships, skimming low above the shattered fleets. The Trills plucked men from the sea with beak and claw. Their riders, Manslayers in silver plate mail, skewered swimming men on hooked lances. Soon the devil-birds would reach the islands, where they would sweep and feast on these few survivors, then move inland to raze the towns. First they concentrated on finishing off the last of the naval survivors.
“We are lost,” D’zan moaned. His eyes turned from Undutu to Khama, then to the burning wrecks and flocks of hungry monsters.
“Yet you live, Majesties,” said Khama. He scanned the men who had reached the beach. One had already died, three were too injured to walk, and six others were wounded yet whole. D’zan had lost his crown as well, but somehow kept hold of his blade. He appeared unharmed but for a gash across his chest and a few burns on legs and cheek. Undutu’s burns were worse, yet he bore them like a true King, without complaint. How they must pain him now that he was free of the cold waters.
Of the eleven survivors, all save D’zan were Mumbazans. Either Khama’s favored folk were more powerful swimmers than the Yaskathans, or they were simply luckier. Perhaps these men had only made it here because their swanship was stationed closest to this island. But that did not account for D’zan’s presence; he had sailed in the prow of the Kingspear.
Eleven men living. A hundred thousand dead.
Khama scented sorcery in D’zan’s exhausted breaths. The Yaskathan King held ancient power within his young flesh. Perhaps it accounted for his surviving when no others of his kind had done so. How could he swim all this way with the weight of that blade on his back? D’zan’s boots were caked with mud and seaweed, as if he had run across the seabed instead of swimming to shore. There was no time to explore the mystery now. It was a blessing that both Kings had survived this day.
The blast of a great war horn sounded above the islands. Thunder followed in its wake.
“Quickly,” Khama told the two Kings. “Gather these men onto my back. We will not let Zyung take us this day. We must fight again on the mainland.”
D’zan and Undutu exchanged a pitiful glance. They lived, yet their hope was dead. Perhaps they would choose to stay and perish with their fleets. Khama would not allow it.
“Hurry!” he growled. His eyes flashed and they obeyed his orders in a daze.
Undutu roused his countrymen with shouts, D’zan with the strength of his arms. Each of the survivors waded into the shallows and took his place upon Khama’s feathery coils. Undutu climbed on to reclaim his place at the base of the Feathered Serpent’s neck, and D’zan sat just behind him.
“Grab hold of the feathers!” Undutu ordered.
A vast roaring filled the whole of the earth as the echoes of the war horn died away. Khama knew it was Zyung who blew that terrible note.