“Right,” Damaric said. They were back in the middle of the street, and she pointed to the higher levels of a few of the buildings around them.
“And look at this. The windows on many of these upper floors have been sealed off with stone and mortar. Some of the doors, too. In many cases the towers, spires or what have you have been knocked down.”
“You don’t think that was from the pressure of the sands that buried the city for so long?” Aric asked.
“It’s hard to tell,” she admitted. Sand was everywhere. Farther in, the city was still buried, but even where the dunes had shifted off the city as a whole, it had left plenty behind. “But look here.” She led them to where a turret had crashed down from a three-story building, and squatted down beside a few good-sized pieces. She lifted one, pushed it away. Sand slid off when she hoisted the chunk, but beneath it, the ground was relatively clear. “If the sand’s weight had knocked this down, wouldn’t it have landed on a thick layer of sand? I think these—at least some of them—were brought down before the dunes buried the city.”
“Perhaps true,” Ruhm said. “But what of it?”
“I don’t know, Ruhm, I’m just speculating. It just seems odd to me—as if they had given up on the upstairs long before the city was abandoned. Even in the buildings we’ve been in, the staircases going up are inaccessible more often that those leading down. And sometimes the walls are still solid, so what would have brought the stairs down?”
“What do you think happened?” Aric asked.
“I haven’t any idea.”
“Perhaps,” Damaric said, “the city’s residents became afraid of something out there. Something that could climb, or fly, a dragon or some other beast from the sky. Perhaps they decided that going down was safer than going up. So they built down, collapsed any spires that might have attracted attention, blocked off their upper windows, knocked down their staircases so anything entering on those upper levels couldn’t easily come down.”
“And perhaps it got them anyway,” Aric said. “Or drove them from their homes. There must be some reason a city so grand would have been abandoned.”
“No water,” Ruhm pointed out.
“That’s true, if there were springs or a lake or anything in the area, it’s long since dried up,” Aric agreed.
“I’m not saying it’s important now,” Amoni said. “Whatever they feared is likely long gone as well. I just thought it was curious.”
It was, and now that Amoni had pointed it out, Aric saw more and more evidence supporting her theory. Like her, he didn’t know what it signified. But it did seem to point to a citizenry fearful of some threat, and that realization made him look at the ruins with a different eye.
After the fifth block, by prearrangement, everyone was to meet back at the main avenue running through the center of the city to report to Kadya what they had found. These reports were likely to be brief, unless some group had had more success than theirs.
They were two streets over from the avenue, within view of most of their comrades, when they heard the shrieks.
Dune reapers were possessed of a terrible patience that allowed them to wait in a single spot for days, or longer, secure in the knowledge that prey would sooner or later come into range. They would eat anything, including sand or stones, if need be, but they had a strong preference for freshly killed prey. They lived in subterranean colonies, where the dune reaper matron grew to enormous size while female warriors and male drones went out in search of sustenance. Sometimes dune reaper colonies moved, leaving behind their carefully crafted nests, for reasons little understood, although it may have had to do with changes in the availability of water or food.
These things Aric knew.
He had never before heard their haunting cries echo through the vast stone silences of an ancient city, or the skittering of their feet, the horrific clacking of their mandibles and the scythelike blades on their front limbs, or the weird chortles and chuffs they made when communicating with each other.
When he heard them now, Aric clutched at Ruhm’s arm.
“Dune reapers,” Damaric said. “A lot of them, it sounds like. Hurry!”
They broke into an anxious sprint, hoping to join their fellows before the reapers attacked. There were probably thirty soldiers around Kadya, and as many slaves, but other groups were also still on their way to the meeting point. One of these, seven in number, was on the last remaining street between Aric’s party and the grand avenue.
That was where the reapers struck first.
A slave running full-tilt for the protection of the larger group risked a backward glance and stumbled over a piece of debris in the road. Before she could get to her knees, a reaper warrior was on her. It shoved one of those long, slender blades between her shoulder blades, thrusting so deep that it emerged from her breast, red with blood. She gave a gasping cry and slumped forward, sagging on the blade. The reaper shook her free, and then two of its drones descended upon the slave, grasping her corpse with claws and dragging her away.
Ruhm held out a big arm, and the other three stopped where they were, hoping the reapers had not noticed them. More warriors and drones came into view, chasing the Nibenese. Two of the soldiers turned to fight. The reapers cut them down easily while drones sped past and felled the others.
“We’re cut off,” Damaric whispered.
As if it had heard him, one of the warriors slowly turned its head in their direction. The warriors’ builds were vaguely humanoid, in that they walked on two legs, and their heads sat atop their torsos and necks. But those torsos were lean and stringy, with ridges down their backs, short stumps of tails, and their heads long and bony, all snout and huge, toothy mouth and glowing red eyes. And the front limbs of the warriors ended in those blades, as if human beings had lashed longswords to their wrists in place of hands.
“Back away,” Amoni said.
Drones hauled away the bodies of the just-killed soldiers and slaves. Others advanced, with somewhat more care, on the larger group of Nibenese. Aric had no doubt they were using the Way to communicate as still others turned their awful heads toward him and his friends. Mandibles quivered, drool glistened where it fringed mighty jaws and gnashing teeth.
Two warriors, and their handful of drones, started toward them.
“Run!” Damaric shouted.
They ran.
They tore back one street in the direction they had come from, rounded the corner so the reapers couldn’t see them, and kept going. Their pounding feet drowned out any sounds the reapers might have made; that and the rush of blood in his ears seemed to Aric to have taken over all his senses. He could barely see where he was going, making out only choppy flashes of the street and buildings and his knees.
“Through here!” Ruhm called. He stopped in front of an alley entrance with a stone arch at the top. The narrow alley cut between two large buildings toward something—a courtyard, perhaps—at its end. Amoni went in first, her long legs covering ground almost as fast as Ruhm’s. Damaric went next, then Aric. Ruhm brought up the rear. The alley was barely wider than Aric’s shoulders. Ruhm had to turn sideways to squeeze through.
“They saw me,” Ruhm said when he emerged into the courtyard.
“But only one of them can fit through at a time,” Damaric said. “We can hold them off.”
Aric took in the layout of the courtyard. Tall buildings hemmed it in on three sides, blocking the worst of the sun’s rays, and a high wall ran across the back. It had survived the city’s devastation in remarkably good shape—but for a thick layer of sand over everything, it might have been abandoned the day before. In the cool shade, Aric felt the sweat on his sides and shivered.