at his punctured chest, a garbled scream bubbling from his throat as he tumbled to the dust.
Sitting in front of a new rider, sunslight behind him, Mia drew the longblade from her back and pushed it through his chest, gravebone splitting his chain mail as if it were dry parchment. A hail of arrows flew at her in answer, but she was already gone, Stepping to another rider’s shadow, slicing as she came. A stray shot killed one of the horses, the poor wretch snapping its legs and killing its rider as it crashed to the sands. The legionaries cried out in rage and alarm, unsure how to best this unholy foe.
“Magik!” one shouted.
“Sorcerii!” bellowed another.
“Darkin!” the cry. “Darkin!”
Mia continued her bloody work, Stepping to three more riders and cutting them down with her blade. It was wet and brutal work. Close enough to see the fear in their eyes. To hear the bubbling in their lungs or the catch in their breath as she ended them. An old refrain. So much red on her hands already. Too much to ever wash away. She wanted to pray as she slew. The benediction to Niah ringing unbidden in her mind.
Hear me, Mother.
Hear me now.
This flesh your feast.
This blood your wine.
But in the end, she said nothing at all. Crimson hands and empty eyes. The riders scattering and shouting alarm, their horses whinnying in terror. By the time she was done, eight remained where twenty had begun. And Mia Stepped off her blood-soaked horse and back onto Julius, her face spattered with red. Wiping her blade clean and slipping it back into her scabbard, she watched as the soldiers dropped back in dismay, more than half their number wounded or slain. Mia took hold of her reins, urged her camel on harder. Looking down at her hands, sticky and wet.
Goddess, the power …
Mia looked up to the indigo sky, the thin wisps of cloud. The heat was failing now that Saan had fallen, the sweat cooling on her skin. The third eye of the Everseeing was yet open, the last remaining sun in the heavens looming at her back. But as sure as the world turned, Saai would soon sink to its rest.
And what will I be then?
The ring of distant horns and thunder of approaching hooves pulled her from her wonderings. Wiping her bloody hands on Julius’s flanks, Mia looked off to the south. She saw the outriders had fled back to their legion, tails between their legs. But now, through the fading pall of red, Mia could see a larger dust cloud approaching. Fingers still sticky, she fetched the spyglass from her bags and peered through it.
“Bollocks,” she breathed.
It seemed the Seventeenth’s commander hadn’t taken well to her treatment of his outriders. Galloping up from the south, Mia could see the legion’s whole cavalry cohort now charging at her—heavy horsemen, clad in thick iron and leather armor, gleaming helms set with tall horsehair plumes. Each soldier was armed with a spear, shield, crossbow, and shortsword. Their mounts were clad in barding made of boiled leather, whipping up a wall of dust in their wake.
Five hundred of them.
Mia looked to the Blackverge Mountains, still at least three turns’ ride away. She turned back to the boiling cloud of dust coming toward her, rising in the wake of two thousand pounding hooves. The charge was drawing closer with every breath. She was caught out in the open. Empty desert in front and behind. If she stole one of the dead scout’s horses, she’d be leaving all her supplies on Julius’s back. If she tried to outpace them on her camel, they’d just cut her down like scythes to the wheat.
Julius bellowed, jowls wobbling.
“Well, shit,” Mia muttered.
CHAPTER 39
FATHOMLESS
Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
The Seventeenth’s cavalry was closing in on Mia, shaking the ground as they came. The horsehair crests on their helmets and their long cloaks were the color of forest leaves. Their mounts were black and rust-red, protected by thick sheaves of boiled leather. The glint of the last sun on their spears was like flashes of lightning. The sound of their hooves was thunder.
“Maybe the Lady of Storms isn’t quite done with me yet,” Mia muttered.
Saai cast a long light out of the west. Her camel’s shadow was a muddy smudge stretching out across the cracked earth and rolling dunes. But Mia’s was a deeper shade of black, sharper at the edges, dark enough for two. And it was moving.