“Wisdom.”
“Patience,” Kataria corrected. “I can wait, until we’re all alive or you and I are almost dead. And then, despite the fact that I have no idea what it is that’s been leaking out of you all this time or if it’s edible, I’m going to pummel it out of you and eat it.”
Mahalar blinked. She cleared her throat.
“In front of you.”
The elder Shen frowned.
“While you’re still-”
“I understand,” Mahalar interrupted. “You are as obsessed with death as any of my people. If we come out of this, if my death will still soothe you, it is yours. But hold your. .”
His voice trailed off into nothingness, as did his stare. Just as well, Kataria wasn’t listening anymore. Her eyes were drawn to the battlefield below. The horde of netherlings had begun to stir. Shouts of command, audible even from so far away, went up in a raucuous cacophony.
They were preparing for something.
She took off, shoving past the elder Shen and hurrying down the stairs to rejoin the barricade.
He stumbled, fell to his knees, didn’t bother to get up. He didn’t feel her shoulder bumping into him, couldn’t feel the stone beneath him. But he felt the island, he felt Jaga, the land he was forever bound to. He felt the breath of thousands of living things upon it go still. He felt the forests shuddering in a wind that wasn’t there. He felt the land itself tense, as though readying itself to be struck.
And at that moment, in a fleeting instance, he felt feet upon Jaga. Two. Then ten. Then hundreds. It was the pain of an old scar, the awareness of the space left by a lost limb, the feel of blood drying on his skin.
He knew this pain.
He knew these feet.
And in the sweep of his amber gaze to the sea, in the storm that had come from the sea to the shore, in the dusty and breathless gaze that emerged from his lips, he knew what was happening.
“He comes.”
“Is this really wise?” Yldus shouted to be heard over the rattle of metal and the roar of females. “Our last charge lost Vashnear. While I lament the loss of a male, I can’t help but feel. .”
Undoubtedly, he had taken the hint that Sheraptus’s distant glare and hundreds of roaring females had strived so hard to convey. The male’s gaze was locked hard upon the warriors knotted around him as they howled with ecstasy for the impending command. The order had been given moments ago, its mere mention like the scent of blood to them, inspiring a frenzy they had no choice but to unleash.
His eyes found Xhai’s sikkhun as it panted heavily, its grin as broad and toothsome as the warriors surrounding it. The Carnassial herself glanced to him, an eyebrow cocked.
“This is what you command?” she grunted, the iron grate of her voice more than adequate to carry over the excited din.
A fever burned behind his eyes as he spurred his beast around and swept his gaze to the distant shore. A great mass of gray clouds came roiling over the horizon like a living thing, slithering across the sky to chase away wind and smoke alike. In the distance, a roll of thunder could be heard.
And in it, a voice.
His palm itched, burned where he had clenched the stone that had restored him. He could feel it as keenly as he heard the voice in the clouds, the scream on the wind.
Unbeckoned, the Gray One That Grins’s words returned to him.
“We are out of time,” Sheraptus muttered. “He comes.”
“Who?” Yldus asked.
“The weapon.” Sheraptus asked, turning a glower to Xhai. “You have it?”
She patted her back. An obsidian spearhead loomed over her shoulder, stark and black against the gray of the sky. Sheraptus nodded grimly, forced a hiss between his teeth.
“End this.”
Xhai offered a stiff nod before turning and sending a roar down the line.
“BRING UP THE FIRST!”
Her howl was echoed amongst the warriors, rattling through the crowd, twisting amongst the iron voices until it was without word or language, a mindless, bloodthirsty howl of anticipation. For the First was brought up for one reason and one reason only.
A reason that became clear, Sheraptus noted, in the sound that followed. Boots, thirty-three of them, marching with such rigid unison as to grind the howls and the bloodlust beneath their heels, heralded the arrival of the pride of Arkklan Kaharn.
They came with armor, thick black plates bound so tightly that the purple of their flesh was obscured completely. They came with helmets, crested and barbed and polished like the carapace of beetles. They came with spears and shields, jagged heads held high, crescents of metal clenched tightly against their bodies.
They came, as one. The only netherlings capable of following orders more complex than “stab this.”
The crowd of warriors parted like a tide to let them through. Even Xhai reined her beast aside to make way. They came to a sudden and disciplined halt, long enough to turn their visored gazes to Sheraptus in compulsory acknowledgment, before turning back to the field.
“QAI QA LOTH,” one of them at the head barked the order. She lowered her spear, thrust it out to the distant barricade. “KEQH QAI YUSH!”
And with the thunder of their boots, they marched out, spreading into a long line of black plate and speartips. Sheraptus had no smiles of pride for the sight that had won him many battles back in the Nether. He had no time.
A mutter of thunder caught his attention. Overhead, the storm clouds swept in, darker than even the halo of gray that encircled the mountain. The voice in the thunder was audible. The anger in its odor stung his nostrils.
The crown of storms had come. And its bearer came with them.
“We move,” Sheraptus snarled to Yldus and Xhai. “Be ready.”
“This isn’t fair, you know,” Denaos muttered as he peered over the barricade. “They’ve got giant, no-eyed beasts, ballistas that shoot metal stars, hundreds of crazy ladies that feel no pain and now they’ve got big, black bipedal bugs.”
He whirled around and glared at the assembled Shen.
“We’re supposed to have the unholy amalgamations between men and animals. They’re cheating.”
“They’re doing something,” Asper said from beside him, a hint of panic creeping into her voice. “They’re coming closer. Marching. They’re not charging. They charge, don’t they?”
“Sheraptus is moving with them,” Dreadaeleon whispered. “The other male, too. I can’t see them, but I can sense them.”
“So they’re making a push,” Lenk said as he pushed his way through the Shen to rejoin his companions, Kataria close behind. “Couldn’t expect them to be content with sending out warriors to get shot one by one forever.”
“That system was working perfectly fine,” Denaos griped.
“What do we do now, then?” Asper asked. “They’re coming closer. He’s going. . they’re going to be on top of us in a moment. What’s the plan?”
“Plan?”
Shalake’s voice boomed with contempt as he strode to the front. His smile was so broad as to be visible even from beneath his skull headdress. He held his club up, flicking free a few lingering chunks of viscera that had been wedged between its teeth.
“Kill them all, of course.”
“Look, it’s not that I object to the conclusion,” Lenk said, rubbing his eyes, “just the logic behind it.”
“And the crazy, murderous lizardman that tried to kill us posing it,” Kataria added.
“Right, and the crazy, murderous lizardman that tried to kill us.”
“Death needs no logic. Death needs nothing but us,” Shalake replied coolly.
Lenk blinked. He turned to the Shen surrounding their leader. “So, do you guys just never tell him what he sounds like or. .”
“Enough of plans and cowering behind coral like fish,” Shalake spat. He held his club high above his head, the stray chunks of meat and bone spattering down upon his headdress. “We will charge. We will meet them upon the field. We will make them bleed and we will show our ancestors that we are worthy of the sacrifices they made!”