“What,” Aysulu retorted, “are you afraid to fight the women?”
Alaric only sneered up in her direction. It was likely he could not see her over the hoardings. She pulled an arrow from her quiver and drew back her bow, leveling it at his chest. Beside her, Roshani was completing her magic circle, scratching runes into the wooden platform with charcoal and chalk.
Aysulu waited, muscles straining against the bow, for Alaric to move. His face was leathery from the winds over the steppe, traced with scars, but he was too young to have been the leader who had destroyed the tribe of Hyrkan Khan twenty years ago. Reavers, as a rule, did not live long lives. But she had chased him over the mountains and the flatlands for two years, and she had seen the trail of destruction in his wake: villages burned, caravans laid waste, fields and forests turned to ash, corpses beheaded and placed upon stakes as a message to any who found them.
For her people, and for the countless lives destroyed since then, Aysulu intended to slay Alaric and scatter his followers to the eight winds.
She let her arrow fly. Alaric’s horse turned at the last moment, and instead of puncturing his ragged leather-and-mail cuirass, the arrow sunk into his thigh. He snarled and swore and kicked his horse into a run, and his riders fell into the place he had left.
Aysulu cursed and drew back a second arrow. It chased him for some distance before falling uselessly into the brush. Alaric knew the range of a steppe bow, and he had run to just outside it, to where his hired shaman chanted and gestured, preparing some foul magic.
Alaric’s second, a broad fellow by the name of Beremund with a mouth like a knife gash across his face, produced a grappling hook from beneath his cloak. It was heavy iron, wickedly barbed, at the end of a length of stout rope. He swung it in wide vertical circles, his eyes measuring the top of the fortification’s gate.
Aysulu took out another arrow. “Stop him!” she cried.
Her slingers pelted him with stones, but the men in front of him raised their shields, deflecting the projectiles like rain off a roof. The hook sailed over the gate and held fast between two sharpened points.
The arrow tore through a hide shield and the arm of the man who carried it, but it was too late. Three men on horseback held the rope and pulled, and the gate gave a mighty groan before it crashed to the ground.
“We could use some magic, if it’s not too much trouble,” Aysulu said.
Roshani made a frustrated noise. “Almost there. These things take time.”
A flash of metal crossed the fallen gate, and Beremund cried out in pain and surprise. Reva had struck him with a thrown dagger.
He tore it out and waved his spear, screaming for a charge. The riders thundered over the fallen gate.
Footsteps marched in the encampment below where Aysulu stood. Spears beat against shields, and the miners began to chant. The shield wall was moving as one being, trapping the reavers between them and the palisade.
“There!” Roshani said. “It’s done.”
The tower hummed with magic. Roshani’s sigils faintly glowed, and blue light twined up her body and down her arms.
Aysulu gave her a nod and ran for the ladder. Roshani no longer needed her protection, and she would be more useful on horseback. She would not let Alaric escape.
She slung her bow over her shoulder and climbed down, dropping the last few feet to the ground. The reavers were pinned down, the wall on one side and the shields on the other, with stones and arrows raining down on them from above. The soldiers of House Kaburh and House Darela had entered the fray on foot, brandishing spears of their own.
It was easy enough for Aysulu to duck out of sight and make her way to the stables. The nobles’ horses were harnessed to their chariots, ready to ride out, and she had saddled her own horse in the dark of the morning, when the first torches had begun to move out of the reavers’ camp.
“Chariots!” she shouted, pulling herself into the saddle. “Come on!”
The two lines at the back of the soldiers’ formation drew away and ran for their horses. The reavers were turning, making for the open gate—they had not expected such an organized resistance. They would be back, however, if given a chance. It was time to ride out and drive them away.
The fallen gate rattled and groaned as Aysulu led the chariots over it and out into the field. Behind them came the shield wall, still chanting in unison, Jin and Eske at their head and Jahan and Heishiro on either side.
Aysulu looked out, past the wheeling riders, to where Alaric and his horse stood still at the edge of the clearing. The shaman made one final motion, and for a moment the light of the sunrise turned dark and greenish. When the shadow cleared, a being made of fire rose from the earth before him.
It was half again as tall as a man, with a broad shape something like shoulders behind its half-formed head, all crowned in flames. Fiery arms stretched out wide, ending in tongues of flame, too many to be fingers. It moved in a sinuous dance, its legs separating and rejoining as it moved. The grass burned and the earth scorched in its wake.
The shaman backed away. Though his summoning was successful, he did not have full control over the creature. It gave an inhuman screech, the sound of whistling steam and the collapse of burning timbers, and charged out across the field. It flung its arms wide, and fire shot out in all directions from the ends of its formless hands.
Aysulu gave it a wide berth as she led the chariots after the retreating riders. Another group was riding in, bows bent and arrows ready, but the shield wall repelled them. They regrouped for another pass, and the chariots went after them. Aysulu broke off and headed for Alaric and the shaman.
The elemental carved a burning line through the fray. It was charging toward the palisade with a singular determination. Had the shaman regained control, or was it simply seeking the largest source of dry timber in the area?
From the top of the unfinished archery tower, Roshani sent out five spears of ice. They hit in an eruption of steam, and the elemental slowed, flames curling in on themselves. Jahan, wielding a poleaxe, ran from the cover of the shield wall and drove the point at the top of his weapon into the heart of the flames.
The elemental dimmed, but Jahan jumped back with a cry and dropped his weapon. The poleaxe’s head had melted and the shaft had caught fire.
Aysulu kicked her horse to a gallop and took another arrow from her quiver. Alaric was well within range, but the confusion of riders circling around him prevented a clear shot. Some were running, disheartened by the resistance and the threat of the elemental.
Alaric drew his sword and drove the blade into the nearest reaver. As the man fell from the saddle, the others turned back toward the palisade. They were more afraid of their leader than anything else.
Finally, Aysulu saw an opening. Her arrow sunk into Alaric’s shoulder. He turned his horse and moved away, but she could see him looking at her.
“Face me, you coward!” she shouted over the noise of the fighting.
She charged past the shaman, who was working another spell. She could not spare him any mind. The chariots were blocking Alaric’s path, and he pulled up to a stop. His face twisted in pain and frustration, he broke the head off the arrow and drew it out.
Aysulu shot him again, this time in his hip, above where her first arrow had landed. This one was caught in his armor and didn’t seem to have injured him much.
“It’ll be your cock I hit next,” she threatened.
Alaric readied his own bow. Aysulu turned her head, and the arrow glanced off her cheek and the shell of her ear, drawing a line of pain across her face. It was a shallow cut, but it bled freely. She kicked her horse again, preparing to ride by him again.
She felt the elemental’s heat before she saw it. It was charging right for her. The shaman must have succeeded in wresting command back from it.
It threw a fireball, and she flattened herself down into the saddle, feeling it blaze over her head. The next one caught her in the back. It burned, but her armor deflected most of it. The elemental was still spending some of its power to resist the shaman’s control.
Still, it was between her and Alaric now, and she could not see him through the flames. She would have to get around it. Her horse shied from the fire, and she let it turn and run for a few paces. She looked back—there was Alaric, pulling back his bow again. She turned the horse and charged.
Aysulu rose up in the stirrups and sent another arrow flying toward Alaric before he could get his shot off. The elemental passed between them, heading back toward the shield wall. The horse found its courage and leaped over the burning trail, carrying Aysulu face to face with the Lion and Wolf’s leader.
He drew his sword.
“Look at me, reaver,” she said. “I’m the last thing you’ll ever see. My name is Aysulu of the tribe of Hyrkan Khan. My father was Ruslan the stargazer. I am going to kill you, and my people will be avenged.”
Alaric swung in a wild arc. His blade severed her bow just above the grip, cutting through wood and sinew. The force knocked her from her horse, and she landed hard in the dust and ash. She heard the snap of her arrows breaking under her weight. The burns on her back made themselves known in a blaze of pain.
He laughed, moving up to loom over her. She picked herself up. With one motion, she drew her short sword and cut the girth of his saddle. He fell, too, in a tangle of limbs and weapons.
Aysulu dropped her sword and picked up Alaric’s dropped bow. She felt for her quiver. There was still one unbroken arrow.
Alaric untangled his feet from his stirrups and stood, sword in hand but still disoriented. He was close enough to touch.
She drew back the arrow with all the strength she could muster and all the force of vengeance, and loosed it into his skull. It went straight through, emerging from his neck. Alaric dropped back down to the earth.
Aysulu lowered the bow. I’ve done it, Father, she thought, not quite able to believe it. Now you can rest, and the rest of my life is mine.
For now, however, there was still work to be done. Some of the reavers had noticed that their leader had fallen, but others were still pressing against the palisade and the shields. The elemental still burned on the field.
She put Alaric’s bow over her shoulder and picked up his sword. In three strokes, she severed his head from his body. The sword she left, replacing it with her own, and she picked up the head and climbed back into the saddle. Holding it aloft, she rode back to the encampment.
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