Tsiory waited, and, as expected, Colonel Dayo Okello chimed in. “Harun is right. Ojore will fall and our flank will collapse. You need to speak with the queen. Make her see sense. We’re outnumbered and the savages have gifts we’ve never encountered before. We can’t win.”
“We don’t need to,” Tsiory said. “We just need to give her time.”
“How long? How long until we have the dragons?” Tahir asked, pacing. He didn’t look like the man Tsiory remembered from home. Tahir Oni came from one of the Chosen’s wealthiest families and was renowned for his intelligence and precision. He was a man who took intense pride in his appearance.
Back on Osonte, every time Tsiory had seen Tahir, the man’s head was freshly shaved, his dark skin oiled to a sheen, and his colonel’s uniform sculpted to his muscular frame. The man before him now was a stranger to that memory.
Tahir’s head was stubbly, his skin dry, and his uniform hung off a wasted body. Worse, it was difficult for Tsiory to keep his eyes from the stump of Tahir’s right arm, which was bleeding through its bandages.
Tsiory needed to calm these men. He was their leader, their inkokeli, and they needed to believe in their mission and queen. He caught Tahir’s attention, tried to hold it and speak confidently, but the soldier’s eyes twitched like a prey animal’s.
“The savages won’t last against dragons,” Tsiory said. “We’ll break them. Once we have firm footing, we can defend the whole of the valley and peninsula indefinitely.”
“Your lips to the Goddess’s ears, Tsiory,” Tahir muttered, without using either of his honorifics.
“Escaping the Cull,” Dayo said, echoing Tsiory’s unvoiced thoughts, “won’t mean anything if we all die here. I say we go back to the ships and find somewhere a little less… occupied.”
“What ships, Dayo? There aren’t enough for all of us, and we don’t have the resources to travel farther. We’re lucky the dragons led us here,” Tsiory said. “It was a gamble, hoping they’d find land before we starved. Even if we could take to the water again, without them leading us, we’d have no hope.”
Harun waved his arms at their surroundings. “Does this look like hope to you, Tsiory?”
“You’d rather die on the water?”
“I’d rather not die at all.”
Tsiory knew where the conversation would head next, and it would be close to treason. These were hard men, good men, but the voyage had made them as brittle as this strange land’s wood. He tried to find the words to calm them, when the shouting outside their tent began.
“What in the Goddess’s name—” said Harun, opening the tent’s flap and looking out. He couldn’t have seen the hatchet that took his life. It happened too fast.
Tahir cursed, scrambling back as Harun’s severed head fell to the ground at his feet.
“Swords out!” Tsiory said, drawing his weapon and slicing a cut through the rear of the tent to avoid the brunt of whatever was out front.
Tsiory was first through the new exit, blinking under the sun’s blinding light, and all around him was chaos. Somehow, impossibly, a massive force of savages had made their way past the distant front lines, and his lightly defended command camp was under assault.
He had just enough time to absorb this when a savage, spear in hand, leapt for him. Tsiory, inkokeli of the Omehi military and champion to Queen Taifa, slipped to the side of the man’s downward thrust and swung hard for his neck. His blade bit deep and the man fell, his life’s blood spilling onto the white sands.
He turned to his colonels. “Back to the ships!”
It was the only choice. The majority of their soldiers were on the front lines, far beyond the trees, but the enemy was between Tsiory and his army. Back on the beach, camped in the shadows of their scavenged ships, there were fighters and Gifted, held in reserve to protect the Omehi people. Tsiory, the colonels, the men assigned to the command camp, they had to get back there if they hoped to survive and repel the ambush.
Tsiory cursed himself for a fool. His colonels had wanted the command tent pitched inside the tree line, to shelter the leadership from the punishing sun, and though it didn’t feel right, he’d been unable to make any arguments against the decision. The tree line ended well back from the front lines, and he’d believed they had enough soldiers to ensure they were protected. He was wrong.
“Run!” Tsiory shouted, pulling Tahir along.
They made it three steps before their escape was blocked by another savage. Tahir fumbled for his sword, forgetting for a moment that he’d lost his fighting hand. He called out for help and reached for his blade with his left. His fingers hadn’t even touched the sword’s hilt when the savage cut him down.
Tsiory lunged at the half-naked aggressor, blade out in front, skewering the tattooed man who’d killed Tahir. He stepped back from the impaled savage, seeking to shake him off the sword, but the heathen, blood bubbling in his mouth, tried to stab him with a dagger made of bone.
Tsiory’s bronze-plated leathers turned the blow and he grabbed the man’s wrist, breaking it across his knee. The dagger fell to the sand and Tsiory crashed his forehead into his opponent’s nose, snapping the man’s head back. With his enemy stunned, Tsiory shoved all his weight forward, forcing the rest of his sword into the man’s guts, drawing an open-mouthed howl from him that spattered Tsiory with blood and phlegm.
He yanked his weapon away, pulling it clear of the dying native, and swung round to rally his men. He saw Dayo fighting off five savages with the help of a soldier and ran toward them as more of the enemy emerged from the trees.
They were outnumbered, badly, and they’d all die if they didn’t disengage. He kept running but couldn’t get to his colonel before Dayo took the point of a long-hafted spear to the side and went down. The closest soldier killed the native who had dealt the blow, and Tsiory, running full tilt, slammed into two others, sending them to the ground.
On top of them, he pulled his dagger from his belt and rammed it into the closest man’s eye. The other one, struggling beneath him, reached for a trapped weapon, but Tsiory shoved his sword hilt against the man’s throat, using his weight to press it down. He heard the bones in the man’s neck crack, and the savage went still.
Tsiory got to his feet and grabbed Dayo, “Go!”
Dayo, bleeding everywhere, went.
“Back to the beach!” Tsiory ordered the soldiers near him. “Back to the ships!”
Tsiory ran with his men, looking back to see how they’d been undone. The savages were using gifts to mask themselves in broad daylight. As he ran, he saw more and more of them stepping out of what his eyes told him were empty spaces among the trees. The trick had allowed them to move an attacking force past the front lines and right up to Tsiory’s command tent.
Tsiory forced himself to move faster. He had to get to the reserves and order a defensive posture. His heart hammered in his chest and it wasn’t from running. If the savages had a large enough force, this surprise attack could kill everyone. They’d still have the front-line army, but the women, men, and children they were meant to protect would be dead.
Tsiory heard galloping. It was an Ingonyama, riding double with his Gifted, on one of the few horses put on the ships when they fled Osonte. The Ingonyama spotted Tsiory and rode for him.