And this was the battle-site that Naroba had chosen to ambush the Red Hounds. I felt a sort of ghoulish horror at what might await us and shivered.
Maybe Naroba was proving to be a little too good at being a battle general.
“We have them.” I heard the glee in Naroba’s voice even before I had the chance to look up and see it in her face. We had moved out into the Shifting Sands, with Naroba and her scouts in the lead, followed by the Daza warriors, while Abioye stayed farther back with the reformed guards of Inyene who had joined our company. They were going to be our ‘reserve’ troops, as Abioye had referred to them—and Naroba had quickly taken up the idea.
Just a couple of days ago you were calling for Inyene’s brother to be shot! I had thought at that, but Naroba had always been one of quick moods. She could change like a fish turning into a new direction when she thought she had to.
Right now, however, Naroba and I were clambering up the side of a dune, having to spread our bodies out as wide as we could to ensure purchase on the loose stuff of the hills. We had just reached the top when Naroba’s scouts indicated what was in the very next gulley below us.
It was the Red Hounds, stretched out along the gulley between our dune and the next, as they were trying to navigate a particularly dangerous patch of quicksand.
“There are a lot of them,” I whispered, seeing that their forces were easily three times the size of ours, if not more. They also had wagons and horses—thankfully with only a fraction of them mounted— and on their wagons, there appeared to not only be supplies but also racks of spears and piles of shields. I shouldn’t have been surprised at this, but for some reason it unnerved me to see such a well-equipped, clearly military expedition in the heart of my homeland.
“But they are trapped, look!” Naroba at my side pointed to where the main body of the Red Hounds was concentrated. They were in the process of adding to the planks that they had laid across the quicksand ahead of them, dismantling as much of their wagons as they dared in order to form a bridge.
About a third of their forces had already crossed this land bridge that they had made, and those who had appeared to be wearing full armor and were armed with bows.
“He’s moved his best fighters across first to protect the rest,” I said, indicating that most of those left on the other side had no bare blades or bows in hand and were shuffling warily to the land bridge.
“Imanu…” the scout on the other side of Naroba whispered—she was a middle-aged, rangy Souda woman called Onessa, I remembered, with a scar down one side of her face from a lion attack. She used to spend days out in the Plains even when I was a child and had apparently taken to her new battlefield role with ease.
“Yes?” Naroba answered her. I felt my teeth grate a little at the familiar sting of shame at that—before I felt instantly guilty. Yes, it was MY mother who was the Imanu—but not here, and not now, I scolded myself, and listened to what Onessa the scout had to say.
“More archers on the ridgeway.” She lifted a careful finger to point out that some of the boulders that stuck out of the top of the opposite dune would move every now and again, before re-shuffling back into more comfortable positions.
“Nol Baggar’s already got his own scouts up there,” I hissed in annoyance. “They’ll see us as soon as we crest the hill!” I whispered in agitation. “We have to abandon the attack—it won’t be a surprise at all—”
“No.” Naroba was adamant. “This is the best chance we’ve had so far—and who knows when another will come!”
“People will die, Naroba,” I whispered severely. “Good people. Daza people—” It still felt strange to be on the verge of a battle, and I still felt ashamed at seeing the Daza having to do this. If there was any way to ensure that the least amount of people died, I would take it. “Perhaps we should wait for a better opportunity…” I murmured, earning a cat-like hiss of disdain from Naroba at my side.
“Open your eyes, Nari.” Naroba nodded further along the gulley to where it started to open out into more golden, gentle dunes. “This is the last patch of quicksand for a while yet, if my eyes don’t deceive me.” She did not have to point for me to know she was referring to the golden-yellow of the packed and arid earth beyond us. We Daza knew that it was the red sands that indicated the wetter pitfalls of sucking sand.
“If we attack out there, these invaders will have a chance to regroup and mount their cavalry. We cannot allow that to happen!” Naroba said, and her voice grew even colder. “We attack. Now.” My rival pushed herself back from the crest of the hill, and I could tell that she was preparing herself to utter her battle cry.
“Wait!” I turned and begged her. “I can call Ymmen. He will fly down and block their way forward—as soon as they see that we have such a powerful dragon on our side—they will give up!”
“Pff.” Naroba turned on me with vehemence in her eyes and in her voice. “Don’t be such a fool, Narissea—do you think that any man or woman who has come so far will give up now?”
She had a point, I was forced to admit—but I also knew that I still had to try to find a better way to resolve this battle.
But—why? I asked myself in consternation. Isn’t this what I had always wanted to do to Inyene and her forces? Beat them from our traditional homelands? Drive them out and make them pay for all of the pain they had caused? The Red Hounds and their cruel Captain Nol Bagger were no different at all, were they?
“Why are you being so squeamish now?” Naroba asked me disdainfully—and it was a question that I had to ask myself, too. And I knew what the answer was.
Dagan Mar. Or rather—my killing of Dagan Mar. I knew that I would do it again, if I had my time all over, and that I would fight that duel exactly as I had done before… But just because you had to do something, doesn’t mean you have to like it, I reflected. Inyene’s chief overseer had been cruel and sadistic—and probably just as bad as the torturer called the Pincher down there somewhere, in his own way.
But something happened when you killed someone, when you struggled and fought and screamed and raged for your life, I knew. There was nothing that would ever be able to take away that terrible feeling of the Lady Artifex’s blade as it slid between Dagan Mar’s ribs with my hand at the hilt. It was a memory that would follow me for the rest of my days—and it was for that reason that I suddenly wanted to find another way out of this, if I could. I might once have been hotheaded, but battle, and my experiences so far on the expedition, had changed me. I didn’t want any other Daza to have to wake up with nightmares, knowing what they themselves had done…
“Ugh. They call you fierce Nari, but I see that your time in servitude has weakened you!” Naroba spat at me, and then was rising to her feet, releasing her grip on the object in her hand and starting to spin it over her head. It was a thick hollowed tube of wood, tapered and shaped at one end, and attached by string to the grip in Naroba’s hand. It was one of the Souda means for communicating over vast distances over the Plains, and it started to make an eerie, resonant whirring noise as it picked up speed.