Page 5 of The Cruel Dawn
Sumerka: too elegant to work as a guard, but he burned with the need to prove to his father that he could handle a sword.
Ilil: she’d had opinions—about weapons, about strategy, about the right amount of pressure to apply on an enemy’s neck to scare them without killing them.
Once upon a time, this gate had thirty guards, each trained in combat techniques by my Mera contingent. Now, though, these gates have been abandoned.
I pull Fury from my scabbard and race past those broken gates that protect nothing.
Everyone I can see is trying to hide beneath rubble from creatures swooping down from the air and snapping at them, tearing through their skin and breaking their bones.
Arrows fly from bows I can’t see, bouncing off the hides of these…these…
Cowslews.
Each creature is as big as a bull, with white skulls for heads and enormous red eyes. They have wings, but these creatures are not birds of prey. They’re not even the battabies I faced down in Azzam Cavern. They have no feathers, but rather brown fur like a bear’s and razor-sharp talons as long as my forearms.
Supreme didn’t create these beasts. They have no symmetry, no sense. The traitor, Danar Rrivae, brought them to Vallendor. And now, the biggest cowslew locks its red eyes with me.“You.”Smoke curls from the beast’s nostrils.
I cock my head. “Yep.Me.”
The creature roars and charges at me, its teeth bared, its talons glinting.
Right as the cowslew springs at me, I roar, almost scaring myself with just how fierce I sound. I hold up my left hand to protect my head, sending a ball of my otherworldly wind that slams the beast back into a house.
For a moment, silence falls across the city as humans and otherworldly gape at me.
A woman shouts, “Celestial!” just as another cowslew swoops down from the sky and snaps her neck in its beak.
I shout, “No!” and shoot wind at that beast, and at another otherworldly that tries again to bite me. Not one of these creatures fears me—they sense that I’m not entirely myself. Their confidence, though, fuels me and steadies my hand, and I hit my marks. One cowslew after another tumbles from the sky. I send them slamming into market stands and shops. If I didn’t have a fuzzy stomach and blurred vision and softening knees, I’d be able to stop even more of these beasts. Yeah, if I was as healthy as a young Mera warrior after eating a full meal, I’d be able to do this wind-whipping all day.
But there are so many cowslews—and more are coming. Fearless, they’re breaking down the temple doors. They’re dancing atop a temple’s domed rooftop, and those stunning mosaic tiles crack, fall, and shatter against the hard-packed dirt.
Cowslews lift grown men into the air and snap them in two within their beaks.
Cowslews rip at the bellies of women and tear out their bowels.
City-folk who see me run behind me, bloody and broken. They crouch, hoping that my wake will protect them.
But I can’t stay in one place. The cries of children pull me south.
I run toward those kids with this cape of terrorized people lumbering behind me—they’re barely managing to stay alive in this fight. I find those young ones in a dead garden. Their bronze, tear-slicked skin burns the amber of sickness.
“Amma!”
“Papa!”
They scream and scream and scream.
But the creatures attacking them aren’t those red-goggled cowslews. No, these snarling beasts are ground-bound urts with shiny silver scales that run along their spines. Their snouts gleam, bright with blood.
I push wind at the silver-spined creatures and shatter three of the four against those mud-bricked walls.
Urt Number Four snarls at me.
I push it into a dry fountain, then run to meet it, driving Fury into its neck.
Four more urts stand where the previous four stood.
“Too many,” I whisper, my limbs trembling.There are too many otherworldly, and just one of me, and I’m about to throw up and pass out. I know I’m gonna lose this battle.
