Chapter 37
Keta had never felt such desperation before.
Each day the reservoir had been a bit lower as the invaders dug more trenches to the lake, draining their precious defense to flood the valley below. Keta had prayed for rain to refill their reserve, but none had come.
The giant gate that the ancients had constructed took hours to open and close, otherwise they could have simply let the invaders walk up a dry tunnel, and then suddenly opened it and washed them all away. So instead Keta had ordered the building of a second dam, right at the entrance, with the hopes of luring the warriors in, and then bursting it. That had worked, but not as well as he had hoped, as whoever was leading the force below had been clever enough to only send a token force to test them. All their hard labor had drowned maybe ten poor fools at best and wasted a great deal of their remaining water.
As the reservoir ran dry, Keta had tasked every able-bodied man in the Cove to collecting and piling stones in front of the tunnel. By that point, he would have collapsed the entire thing if he could, but the ancients who built the Cove had made their tunnel from a form of cement that was far too durable. If they had used all the Fortress powder left in the Cove, it would have only broken a small bit of it.
The warriors below had been relentless, methodical. As the faithful piled up rocks, the warriors tore them down. They must have brought in workers or slaves from somewhere else because they were able to form a chain of bodies, from top to bottom, and stones were thrown out the bottom as quickly as Keta’s people added more.
There was an oil seep in the very bottom of the crater, so Keta directed men to bring up as much of the stuff as they could. They would pour it through the cracks until they were sure it was soaking the feet of the invaders on the other side, and then light it on fire.
That caused them to retreat, but once the smoke cleared, they came again.
Day after day they did this, until their oil was as depleted as their water. It took time for the seep to refill, which was sufficient for the Cove’s regular use, but not for this.
From the lookouts, it seemed that more warriors kept arriving as the siege went on, until it was as if the entire warrior caste of Akershan was assembled below, waiting to kill them.
The great house must have dispatched its wizards as well, as great black birds, far too large to be natural, began to circle far above the Cove, constantly watching.
Keta had wizards, and a fortune in demon hide, but their brains were still recovering from the spell that had only recently been broken. Laxmi had been the most coherent of them, but she’d gone with Thera. Whether they’d be of use or not, he told the freed slaves of the Cove’s situation, gave them all the demon they could carry, and asked that when the Akershani attacked, to do the best they could with it. To their credit, each of them had vowed to fight on behalf of the rebellion that had saved them from the House of Assassins and provided them with a home.
At night Keta slept next to the empty reservoir, with a meat cleaver next to his head, so he could be there to lead his people when the inevitable breakthrough happened. It was hard to sleep through the continual banging of picks and shovels on the other side. By day he directed their defenses, and he prayed constantly, begging the gods to send them a miracle. The rest of the time he wondered how he had failed the gods, that they would forsake their chosen people so.
He saw no way out. The Sons of the Black Sword were fearsome, but even if they returned now, they were too few to defeat such a mighty army. He had very few trained fighters. He had a handful of old Fortress rods; the Sons had taken all the fine ones procured by Ratul with them. There was no other escape. He couldn’t even name another Keeper and pass the sacred Book of Names on, so he had hidden the sacred tome in a hole, wondering as he buried it if a thousand years of secret history would die with him.
The one resource Keta had was laborers, so they cut down trees and piled up logs. Once every loose stone had been found, they broke more with hammers. They carried buckets of dirt from the farming terraces and dumped them atop the barrier.
Then one day a wizard set thirty of his laborers on fire.
The fire had come right through their shoddy wall, searing flesh and burning hair. The faithful caught on the edge of that conflagration had run screaming, clothing ablaze.
The aftermath was horrifying.
Keta cursed himself for not predicting such an attack. He’d known they had wizards. He should have expected such trickery. Worse than the injuries and deaths was that it slowed the work. Once the faithful were afraid to approach their makeshift wall, they began losing ground, and the barrier between them and warriors weakened.
The freed slaves tried to explain what wizards could and could not do. Such a fiery trick required a great deal of demon, and the farther it was sent, the more it needed. So Keta had ordered the faithful back. They still had the narrow spillway channel where the tunnel ended. Here, out of range of the magical fire, they would stand. They could hold the lakebed above it, firing their Fortress rods, throwing spears, launching arrows, and hurling stones down at any warriors who came through the chokepoint. They would put up more defenses, sharpened stakes, and stone walls.
Except they’d not had time to accomplish all of that, for the Akershani had grown tired of this siege and decided to finish it, once and for all.
That night, Keta had been trying to comfort some of the loved ones of those who had been burned earlier, when the screaming had started. His head snapped up reflexively, and without thought, he ran back toward the tunnel.
A Fortress rod discharged with a crack of thunder. Voices cried out in terror and agony. Keta recognized the sound of men dying.
There was chaos at the spillway. At first he thought that the last of their wall had crumbled, but then he saw it was still standing, though the rocks were shaking from the renewed onslaught against the other side.
Somehow, there was a single Akershani warrior standing there as if he’d materialized from thin air, and already splayed out around his feet were many of the faithful men of the Cove, their limbs severed and arteries spraying.
How?
And then Keta saw the great black birds blocking the stars as they passed by overhead. Wizards had dropped this killer into their midst.
Except it was only one man.
“Attack!” Keta roared as he pulled the meat cleaver from his belt.
The Akershani was dressed in armor and furs, with a horse’s mane flowing from the back of his helm. He heard Keta’s command, then lifted his sword in a mock salute, only it was no sword at all. It was destruction given form. It ate the torchlight. It was blacker than the night. Blacker than the endless nothing the Law declared was all that lay beyond death.
All the faithful guarding the causeway rushed him. The warrior was there, then he was gone, moving between their bodies and leaving them in pieces. An axe was thrown, but with a flick of his wrist the handle ruptured into splinters and the head went spinning away. Arrows were launched, but it was if he knew they were coming and simply moved out of the way. Another bullet struck the ground where he’d been standing—
And then the real slaughter began.
The rebels fought hard, but that was because they didn’t realize the terror that they were facing. Keta did. He grabbed the nearest man by the shirt and dragged him close to shout in his ear. “Run back to the Cove! Tell them I said to hide! All the women and children, go into the deepest corners, the bottom of the crater, among the terraces. They must run and hide and not make a sound and pray the warriors pass them by. Go! Go!” Keta shoved him away, waited to confirm that he would deliver the message, and then turned back to witness the murder of his beloved faithful.
The killer acted with inhuman swiftness, intercepting every attack with ease, even the ones that came from directions he couldn’t possibly see, and each time that black sword moved, another man received a horrifying wound. The black steel went through flesh as if there was no more resistance than air. When it pierced bodies, it didn’t just cut them, it tore them asunder. It shattered their spears. It broke their clumsy wooden shields. Only steel seemed to slow the thing. Bones exploded into splinters.
Four more men died before Keta could blink, and by the time he opened his eyes it was six.
For a moment, he was back in Great House Uttara, in that awful moment he had seen his first attempt at rebellion die, as Devedas killed all his friends and broke the spirit of the remainder. Ratul had given him the book and ordered him to run, to become the only survivor. This was that all over again, but so much worse.
Only this time Keta did not run. There was nowhere left for his kind to run to.
“For the Forgotten!” Keta lifted his cleaver and charged.
The warrior slipped out of the path of the Keta’s blade, then backhanded him to the ground with one gauntlet.
He’d not even seen that coming. With head ringing and lips bleeding, Keta lay there, knowing he should have died, but somehow hadn’t.
His foe had already moved on, with black steel singing. Within the span of a few heartbeats most of the Cove’s defenders died horribly. The rest of the rebels turned and ran, but the warrior followed, slicing through spines and cutting off legs. Dizzy, Keta got up and went after him. He slipped in a puddle of blood, fell, but staggered back to his feet.
The warrior sensed his approach and turned.
“In the name of the Forgotten, I command you to stop!”
Surprisingly, the warrior paused, but not out of fear, rather out of curiosity. He reached up and unfastened the mask of his helmet to let it hang, revealing a surprisingly young face. “I see you give orders here, but who are you to command me?”
“I am Keta, the Keeper of Names, high priest of the Forgotten. Cease this violence and leave my people be!”
“A priest?” Incredulous, the bearer sneered at the meat clever. “Put that silly thing down. Does ‘priest’ mean you rule these fools?”
Keta kept the cleaver raised. “I am their guide. It is my purpose. It is what I have been called to do.”
One of the fleeing rebels turned long enough to loose an arrow, but the bearer struck it from the air without taking his gaze from Keta. “My uncle wanted me to be a Historian. Look how that turned out.”
“This is sacred ground, bearer. The gods will curse you if you harm their chosen in this place.”
“Brave words, but I’ll risk it.” He nodded toward the barricade as rocks tumbled from it and picks burst through. “I didn’t kill you because it’s clear you were some kind of leader. Surrender to my men for questioning and be spared.” Then he began walking after the retreating rebels to continue his bloody mission.
“No! I will not surrender.” If all Keta could buy with his life was a bit more time for his people to hide, then it was well spent. “I know your sword requires you to accept all challenges.”
The blood-soaked warrior turned back and laughed at him. “It does require that, you brave, strange little man.”
“Then I challenge you.” Keta was terrified. Shaking. “Offense has been taken!”
The warrior’s smile died. “More offense than you can imagine was given when your kind took Chakma.”
Had the duel been accepted? Keta did not know these things.
The two of them stood ten feet apart, surrounded by severed limbs and lacerated bodies. As a casteless, Keta had been a butcher. He had seen thousands of living things rendered into their component bits, but never as roughly as this. The top of the spillway had turned into a slaughterhouse beyond imagining. Keta could hear the moans of the dying, the crackle of torches, the crumbling of their barricade, and the distant sounds of his terrified people, desperately trying to hide.
“What now?”
“Ask your illegal gods for help and hope that makes some difference, I suppose.”
Keta did. Forgotten, please protect your children. Conceal them from the warriors’ eyes. Accept this humble servant’s sacrifice.
Then he rushed forward and swung the cleaver with all his might.
The bearer moved so quickly that Keta didn’t even understand what happened. His hand simply came apart.
His momentum carried him past his foe, but then he stumbled, stunned by the ruin left at the end of his arm. The cleaver was on the ground. Some of his fingers were atop it, still twitching. What remained of his hand had been split in half, and his pinky dangled by a thread of tendon. Keta could see white bones through the red mess.
Then the pain arrived and put him on his knees.
A large rock was rolled aside, and warriors clad in gold-painted armor began rushing through the hole.
“Secure this prisoner,” the bearer said, gesturing at Keta. “He’ll know the rest of the rebellion’s secrets. Send up ten more paltans. I want a thorough search of every inch of this place. It’s time to clean out this nest of rats.”
Keta was in such pain he could barely think, yet he could still pray. Please, Forgotten. Lend me some of your strength.
Before the warriors could reach him, Keta struggled to his feet once more, reached down with his left hand, knocked the severed fingers aside, and took up his cleaver again. The pain was so unbearable that all he could do was tuck his crippled limb tight against his chest.
“They are not rats. They are free men and our duel is not over!”
The bearer seemed surprised to see Keta standing. “It was over before it began.”
“This is our home. I built it.” Keta was wobbling, knees quivering, as the blood from his hand soaked his shirt and ran down his chest. “We just wanted to be left alone. We only wanted to be free! I do not yield! The faithful will never yield!”
The warriors paused, looking between defiant Keta and their master, unsure what to do.
The bearer gave the Keeper of Names a slow nod. “Respect.”
And then he rammed the black steel blade through Keta’s guts.