with the blade, slicing one of them across the torso just as the other spears him through. He gurgles blood and cants over, dead before he touches the ground. One of the mongrels dives forward and clamps down on the spear-carrier’s leg, gnawing and thrashing its head. They plunge the spear into its neck and cast it away.
Jarrik guides his horse through a cluttered alleyway and comes up behind the tribe’s nest. Several archers slink behind the stone wall, with another holding a torch around to light up the pitch before they fire. Jarrik shoots one of them at distance then canters back for cover. The tribesmen surge forward in a rush, levying a hail of arrowfire at Jarrik and his mount. He lobs off a couple more shots but they overtake him in an instant, skewering him through the neck. Melted tar runs down his chest and the flames encase his head. He slumps over and his horse sets off, bucking and threshing as its hide lights up with bright, demonic fire. Horse and rider go caterwauling across the ruins, smoldering and screaming, both spiked through with a dozen burning quills, looking like some bleak harbinger of doomsday come to warn of the apocalypse several centuries too late.
Feiyan wanders through the side streets, holding fast to the rubble, and when he reaches a forked intersection he realizes despairingly that he is surrounded. A menagerie of filthy tribesmen with ropy, knotted hair marches toward him from all directions, their spears thrust out, their eyes steeped in icy hatred and their sadistic grins reeking of utter and profound bloodlust.
Jack and Lia fight nasty flashbacks as they huddle in the crawlspace with their ankles and wrists bound up, spears leveled on them starkly. The women and children of the tribe sit across the dim space, holding on to each other, regarding the young trespassers with suspicion. The riot outside ceases. Footsteps and scraping sounds approach the holdout. Jack doesn’t know whether to feel relief or terror when it is the tribe’s leader that appears at the misshapen doorway, and not the Nezra.
“E’stranna maan,” he says.
Jack is lifted to his feet and carried into the alleyway. The tribesmen stand in a semicircle around Feiyan, several others keep him pinned to the ground with his arms and legs drawn out. They march Jack straight to his prone, struggling form.
“Jack…” he moans. “What’s happening?”
Jack says nothing.
“Tah eh kine tondessa?” the leader asks, his voice a throaty growl. “Kine?” he repeats, and gestures back and forth between Jack and Feiyan.
The tribesmen watch Jack expectantly. He is not certain what they want from him, but he gets the notion that he’d better do something quick. He lowers his head and works his jaw around for a moment, then lifts his face and spits on Feiyan. This elicits a reaction and the men chatter vigorously in their unknown tongue.
“Enah kine? Mah sikelern des maan, des e’stranna?” The leader hovers the spear over Feiyan’s head then nods to Jack’s captors and they release him. “Tah sikelern e’stranna…”
“Jack? Jack, what is this?” Feiyan croaks.
“Sikelern.” The leader places the spear in Jack’s hands.
“I think he wants me to kill you, Feiyan.”
“He’s crazy, Jack. Don’t do this.”
Feiyan pleads with such pathetic helplessness that Jack ruminates briefly on the nobility of killing an unarmed man held to the ground—and then he thinks on Lia, and his lost family, and the home that he will never see again, and he raises the spear above his head and plunges it down into the center of Feiyan’s chest. Everyone steps back and watches the warrior quake on the ground, the spear shaft trembling in the air as he spasms. When he is still and dead they rush forward and kick his corpse and run him through with a broad assortment of sharp instruments.
“Tonaa. D’estranna sahl lah cherreth.” He walks to the crawlspace and takes the hand of a little boy and leads him to Jack. “Lah cherreth.”
His words are unknown but the meaning comes clear in an instant—Men like these stole children from us. He bows his head and raises his palms, and without thinking Jack returns the gesture. Two men come forward and present him with his bow and knife, and soon they all crowd around him, chattering and touching him.
“Sajiress,” the leader says, gesturing to himself.
“Sajiress?”
“Eyah.”
Lia rushes from the underground hideout and bursts through the circled tribe and throws her arms around Jack’s neck. “What happened?”