Page 6 of The Cruel Dawn
The silver-spined urts and the red-eyed cowslews see me standing by this fountain, towering over a crowd of cowering humans.
I want to tell these people that it will be okay, but how can it be okay when I’m leaning against Fury’s hilt because my legs aren’t strong and I’m so fucking thirsty and the world goes back to fading at the edges and—
The ground quakes beneath my boots. The sound of the buckling earth echoes over the shrieks of the city-folk. Shouts fill the air. These aren’t howls of fear but the battle cries of the fearless. I hear metal striking flesh and bone. I hear…laughterand shouts of, “Kai!” Others shout,“Fekaa!”
Huge warriors, the men bare-chested, the women wearing black or red bandeaus, race around me as swift as nighttime fog. Eight of them stop to surround me and the terrified humans in my wake. But their weapons face inward, aiming at me and not the urts and cowslews that are steadily devouring the mortals of this town.
How amIthe threat?
I glance at these warriors’ feet—feet large enough to have made those shoeprints out in the desert.
These warriors are as tall as the city’s mud-bricked houses, and they wear linen and leather sarongs that protect their muscular thighs. Their tattoos swirl like black-and-red smoke around their torsos, and black-and-red paint adorns their sharp, high cheekbones. Their irises are ruby-rimmed and filled with hatred.
The warriors not guarding me move from house to garden to town square, looking for urts and cowslews to kill. Blades high, blades wet, blades hot from work.
I smile at a woman warrior and step forward with my hands up. “Hi. You may not remember me, but I’m not—”
The warrior standing behind me presses his blade against my neck and growls, “Dum’s kuqa ur aerr maqar kuqa osoem.”Don’t move or you’ll never move again.
He speaks…Mera?
Another type of warrior works on the edges of the battle. They aren’t built for fighting, and their beauty is more of a hush than a holler. Their smiles are soft, their gray eyes bright and sparkling. They wear tunics and loose trousers made of linen and light, and they kneel beside dying and injured villagers who are drowning in amber waves of death. They place their soft hands against the foreheads, broken limbs, and hearts of the injured, and whisper, “Assiph mi seshm sihv fi misisiv.”Accept the light and be healed.
They are speaking Eserimean, the second of my two native tongues.
But why are theyhere, now, in the thick of the fighting?
A woman cries out.
The blade at my neck disappears.
Two cowslews attack another warrior who is holding me hostage. The circle has broken, and now, my captors are also fighting the otherworldly.
I back away from the fountain, careful not to stumble over my living cape of now-twenty city-folk.
An urt lunges at me from my right.
I sweep it against a wagon and burn another in the sky. I turn to run toward the sound of more fighting, but four flying creatures thump down in front of me, blocking my path. Three land behind me. They all snap their beaks at me, and one cowslew successfully slashes my wrist.
I cry out at the blood spurting out around my hand. Trembling, I stagger back, still shocked. Feels like my arm is on fire and filled with broken glass.
The creature’s beak is now red with my blood, and it lunges at me again.
But a warrior’s dagger slides between the cowslew’s shoulder blades, killing the creature before he aims his blade at me again.
“What the fuck?” I cry, wincing from the fiery pain now sparking from my hand up to my shoulder. “I’m not the enemy, idiot.”
But the ground shakes again. Stones and dirt explode all around us.
Up in the sky, a ball of fire the size of a mountain heads straight for the city.
What thefuck?
The heat of the meteor warms my face, and even the otherworldly shield their eyes against its brightness.
The ball of fire races closer…closer…
BOOM!
