Chopping brush proved to be nervous work. Though he checked often and had Stedd standing watch as well, Anton kept suspecting that a lion was stealing up on him while he was intent on his task. But he and his companions finished building their boma before nightfall, even if it did look too low and flimsy to slow an attacking great cat for more than a moment.
The fires were somewhat more reassuring. Umara’s words of command made the flames leap high and burn bright. They might actually serve as a deterrent … assuming the master of the pride couldn’t extinguish a real blaze as easily as an illusory one.
Men faced outward, staring. Some gnawed biscuits and smoked fish, but at first, despite the exhausting day’s march, no one tried to sleep. Everybody was too tense.
Snuffling and wiping at a runny nose, a sailor voiced the common expectation: “They’ll come to finish this when it’s full dark. Night is when a lion normally hunts.”
And, Anton thought, the cats might well come from the direction of the plagueland, precisely because that was the one direction in which they hadn’t revealed their presence during the day. So he kept watch in that direction, where the murk was like a desolate sky in which only a handful of blue stars burned. Of course, he thought wryly, even a handful was more than anyone in the vicinity of the Inner Sea had beheld since the start of the Great Rain.
The azure flames wavered like ordinary ones, and together with the blackness, that made it difficult to tell if they were doing anything else. But abruptly, Anton saw, or thought he saw, that one was growing gradually larger. Or rather, coming closer.
For an instant, he was certain he was seeing the unnatural blaze bonded to the master of the pride. Then the blue fire flowed straight through briars, dimly illuminating the closest stems and stickers in the process, and he perceived it wasn’t attached to anything. It was drifting by itself like a will-o’-the-wisp.
That only made it somewhat less alarming. Anton turned to alert Umara in the hope that her wizardry could douse the flame. When he did, though, he spied Stedd, seated cross-legged among men who were too busy watching for the foe to pay him any mind, staring intently at the approaching glow.
Anton almost shouted at the boy, then remembered that the Thayan mariners didn’t know Stedd the way he did, were already on edge, and might react with brutal dispatch to anyone who seemed to be trying to make an already perilous situation worse. He took the young prophet by the arm, hauled him to his feet, and led him to a spot as far from the others as the confines of the boma afforded.
“Were you pulling the blue fire closer?” Anton whispered.
Stedd nodded.
“In Asmodeus’s name, why?” Anton had to make an effort to keep his voice down. “Blue fire isn’t a toy! It could kill us in a heartbeat. Or twist us into forms so foul we wouldn’t want to live.”
“I wasn’t playing with it! I was figuring it out!”
“Again, why? Never mind, I know. Because your dead god wants you to. Well, as usual, he has a wretched sense of timing. Help the rest of us keep watch, and you, Umara, and I can discuss blue fire in the morning.”
The night wore on. The crackling, smoking fires burned down, and the company built them up again with more deadwood and Umara’s cantrips. Safely above the reach of lions, an owl hooted, but otherwise, any animals in the area kept quiet. Despite the grinding tension, a couple weary men eventually lay down on the ground and dozed with their weapons under their hands.
Anton sat for a time, then stood up and stretched. His back popped. He took a drink from his water bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and took a fresh look at the blue lights.
Then, like the world itself was splitting in two, a prodigious roar pounded out of the darkness. Dropping the bottle, he cringed from it. So did everyone else.
At least, he realized, the fires weren’t going out. But wide-eyed men were stumbling, intent only on covering their ears, and surely, the lions were already charging.
“Fight!” Anton bellowed. The roar was fading, but even so, he wasn’t sure anybody heard him.
“Fight!” Ehmed echoed, and then Umara did the same. Still, it didn’t look like the rest of the Thayans were heeding the command. Meanwhile, bounding shadows converged on the circle of brush.
“Help us!” Stedd shrilled. He held out his hand to the east, and red-gold light pulsed across the campsite. Purged of panic and confusion, the Thayans gripped their weapons and came on guard just as the first lions sought to jump the boma.
Anton shot at the nearest target, a lioness, and the quarrel flew harmlessly over its back. The animal scrambled over the barricade and lunged at him, and, backpedaling, he hurled the crossbow at the felid’s snarling face. It glanced off the beast’s skull without slowing it even slightly.
Anton saw that his blades couldn’t clear their scabbards before the lioness reached him, nor, with men and beasts battling on either side, could he evade by springing right or left. But his scurrying retreat had brought him to a point where a fire seared his back, and he hopped back into the yellow blaze.
He meant to keep moving right out the other side, but his foot caught on a piece of burning wood, and he fell down amid glowing orange coals and ash. The heat of the blaze closed around him like a fist and invaded his airways, too.
Scattering embers and scraps of burning wood, he rolled and flung himself clear of the fire. Then, gasping, taking stock, he decided he was likely blistered but not burned worse than that. His clothing wasn’t on fire, and the lioness wasn’t pursuing him through the flames. He felt a surge of relief until he realized he and Stedd were now on opposite sides of the boma.
He tried to reach the boy as expeditiously as possible, but there was no way to force his way through the press except by fighting. He slashed a lion’s back legs out from under it while it was intent on a marine, and when its hindquarters dropped, the Thayan thrust a boarding pike into its vitals. Afterward, Anton managed four more strides and then had to clear his path by helping two other mariners kill a different beast.
So far, he and his companions appeared to be holding their own. But how many lions were there? Amid the howling chaos of lunging bodies and dazzling flame, it was impossible to tell.
Anton rounded the fire through which he’d rolled, spotted Stedd, and breathed a sigh of relief. Along with one of the zombies, Ehmed Sepandem stood so as to shield the boy from attackers. The leonine body on the ground in front of him showed he was doing a fair job of it.
But then a shape as long as Falrinn Greatorm’s sailboat and as tall as the lowest yard on a square-rigger’s mast bounded out of the darkness. Coupled with its hugeness, its mane of blue fire should have revealed its approach when it was still some distance away, but it seemed to spring from nowhere all in an instant.
The gigantic lion could have simply stepped over the thorny barricade in front of it. Instead, the beast trampled and crushed it, perhaps because it didn’t even notice it was there.
Mindlessly impervious to awe or fear, the zombie lurched forward with boarding pike upraised, and the lion swiped at it. The attack ripped the animated corpse apart and smashed some of the pieces flat.
His sour face resolute, Ehmed stepped forward with a javelin in one hand and a cutlass in the other. Rushing forward to support him, Anton glimpsed a lioness lunging in on his flank.
The pirate pivoted, slashed with the saber, and caught the cat in the neck. The beast fell down thrashing, blood pumping from its wound.
The kill had only taken a moment, but when Anton turned back, Ehmed lay rent and squashed like the zombie. Head lowered, the lion with the fiery mane lunged at Stedd. It caught the boy in its mouth, picked him up, and ran in the direction of the other blue flames burning in the night.