Sword Destiny (17 page)

She found her uncles and brothers and their surviving war captains in the great audience hall and it was her turn to be shocked. Jahan needed a spear shaft to help him walk, although the great ruby-hilted sword was again strapped to his side. His hair was now white and his face deeply lined with fatigue and anguish. Devan's face was almost a mirror image. Both of them had grown old and weary in her absence. The young Lords Gujar and Kasim and her half-brother Rajar, whom she remembered as a group of carefree young men, were all like Nirad, hardened, grim-faced adult warriors. Even Ramesh, whom she still thought of as her baby brother, looked as tough and battle-scarred as the others.

They greeted her with a mixture of confused emotions, their relief and joy at seeing her alive tormented by the fact that, in their view, she had come home to them to die. After she had hugged and embraced them all, there was a moment of awkward silence. Maryam could feel the tearing pain in her own heart, the hot tears only just behind her eyes, the cold snakes of death already squirming in her stomach, and yet she strove to speak bravely.

“Uncles, you cannot do this.” She appealed to Jahan and Devan. “The
Juahar
and this last stand upon the plain. You must wait. I beg you. You must hold Karakhor for at least another day.”

“Karakhor will not hold another day,” Jahan said simply. “There is no food left in the city and the population is starving. The city wells are dry and the waters of the Mahanadi are red with blood. And now our walls are breached in too many places. Yesterday we were beaten back and only nightfall saved us from being swamped. More than a hundred of our fighters died and many scores more were wounded. Today we have one hundred less to man the ramparts, and of those who do stand, there is not one who is not wounded or exhausted. Our ranks are half-filled with old grandfathers and with boy children who should still be only playing at war.” He shook his head bitterly. “No, Maryam. I love you as my own daughter—but I cannot pretend that Karakhor will stand another day.”

“But the
Juahar
—it is too horrible. My father would never condone the rite of
Sati
.”

“In normal times, none of us would condone the rite of
Sati
. It was for old women only, old widows who had no life left without their husbands. The priests would not deny them that right if they insisted. But now we have no choice.”

“Our own dear wives and daughters will follow your mother into the Holy Flame.” Devan added his own voice and for the first time ever Maryam saw the tears in his eyes. “We cannot leave them to the beast lust of Maghalla. After today we will not be here to protect them.”

“No,” Maryam persisted. “It is not yet over. My blue god will return—for me—and to save Karakhor. You must hold out a little longer.”

“Your blue god deserted you,” Devan reminded her. “Your own courage brought you home to us. Your blue god left you to the mercy of Maghalla.”

“But Raven will come back.”

“Even if this proves true, why would he fight now for Karakhor?” Jahan was sceptical and with a wave of his hand he indicated the lazer scars and sections of damaged stonework that were still visible on the surrounding pillars and archways that upheld the great hall. “The last time he was here he slew the Lord of Gandhar in this very room. He tried to kill us all.”

“Someone here in Karakhor tried to kill him. There were three assassins. Raven was attacked in the street.”

“He destroyed our temple. He insulted our gods.” Jahan was unforgiving.

“But he will come back. And this time it will be different. Raven is my husband now. I am his woman.” She rushed on quickly in case they pressed for details of a marriage ceremony that had never taken place. “He will come back to claim me, to fight for me. For me he will fight for Karakhor.”

There was another moment of long silence, and then Jahan said wearily, “It is too late. Dawn is upon us and already our forces are forming their last battle lines upon the plain. Maghalla can see what is happening. Sardar will wait for us to take our places in the front rank, but he would not now allow our men to withdraw again behind the walls. We must go now and join them. The dice of fate are already cast and rolling on the battlefield.”

Maryam wept as they turned away from her, the scalding tears of anger and frustration boiling down her cheeks. But the gods had not yet finished playing with Karakhor. Faintly, and then with a deafening roar of power, they heard the return of the last Solar Cruiser as it descended to circle over the mauled city. A few moments later Raven landed his ship in the very heart of the great plaza between the circle of temples.

 

 

 

With the ship's main battle lazers dead, Raven had decided against another landing on the open plain, and the plaza was the only wide, cleared space within the city walls. Putting the ship down had demanded all of his superb flying skills and it had been in the balance whether the fast-draining dregs of propulsion power would last until the ship touched ground. The blast from the dying engines radiated into the temple courtyards and scattered both the funeral pyres and the circles of white-faced priests. Then abruptly the cushioning thrust fires extinguished. Raven already had the support legs clamping down, only just in time to stop the erect ship from toppling over.

The tension on the flight deck eased. Their blue faces relaxed and they grinned at each other. Taron slapped Raven on the back in a rare demonstration of camaraderie.

“Well done, Commander. For a moment there, I thought we were going to crash.”

“So did I.” Raven chuckled, shrugged out of his straps and stood from his command chair. “But at least we are down. Now let us go and find out what sort of a mess we have come down into.”

He led the way and his crew followed him into the airlock, and then out through the hatch and down the long exit ladder to the plaza below. There they all moved back to stare up in wonder at their crippled ship. Where the Alphan lazer beams had hit, the outer metal skin of the hull was blackened and twisted, half-melted and in places torn and flapping like strips of ragged steel flesh. The vessel had taken a savage hammering and looked as though it had been kicked around the stars in the heat of a supernova. They did not need Caid's knowledge or the woeful look on the engineer's face to know that their once-proud Solar Cruiser would never fly again. They were shipwrecked and marooned forever and were lucky that they were all still in one piece.

While they stood in that last moment of silent, sombre salute to their dead ship, Maryam came running up to meet them with Jahan, Devan and the ruling elite of Karakhor trailing uncertainly behind her. She threw her arms around Raven's neck and kissed him hard on the mouth.

“I knew you would come back,” she told him, although it was partly a lie, for she had not always been sure.

Raven laughed although his calculating eyes were carefully watching her uncles and her brothers. “It was a small business we had to settle. Now it is over.”

Quickly Maryam told him all that she had to tell. Raven and his crew listened with flat, expressionless faces and she was aware of her uncles and brothers watching and listening just as intently, even though they did not understand her words. She had to resist the urge to gabble, but at last she finished desperately. “I have told them you will help, that your ship's weapons will destroy Maghalla.”

“Our ship is dead,” Raven said simply. “Our white fire is all spent. There is nothing left.”

Her expression was crushed. She stared at him and at the ship, taking full note for the first time of all the massive structural damage it had sustained. Then she said desperately, “Your hand weapons?”

Raven looked down at the hand lazer at his hip. “We can kill a few, but not all of your enemies.” He smiled and turned to his four companions. “We are invited to a war. It is not a Gheddan fight and I can no longer command you in the name of the empire and the City Sword. The choice is yours. All it offers is the chance to die with a blade in your hand.”

Garl shrugged. “It is all we came for,” he said simply.

Taron nodded, his ugly face grim. “We stand with you, as always.”

Maryam felt a huge surge of relief. Tears wet her eyes as her emotions turned somersaults, but she remembered to switch back into Hindi as she turned to Jahan and the rest. “They will fight for us,” she cried joyfully. “Their ship is dead, but they still have the white fire weapons at their sides. They will use them against Maghalla.”

Jahan still looked doubtful. He did not trust the blue men and he still harboured the old grudges and memories. However, all that any of them had expected from this day was a violent death and any ally was a gift not to be turned away. He looked to Devan, received no argument, and slowly nodded.

Maryam looked to Kaseem who had appeared with the others. Behind him stood the first group of women dressed in the white robes of
Sati
: her mother Padmini, her aunt Kamali, and the wives and daughters of the princes and the noble houses, all of them with faces as fear-white as their plain and simple gowns. She stepped forward and seized Kaseem by his thin, bony shoulders, holding him so that they were face-to-face, staring fiercely into his wrinkle-wreathed eyes. “Hold back the
Juahar
fires. Please, Holy One—just for a few hours.”

Kaseem flinched and his ancient bones trembled. He said slowly, “For a few hours. I will watch from the walls.”

Raven had turned to Jahan, each now calculating the strengths and the weaknesses of the other. They had no common language, but Raven clapped the old Warmaster General on the shoulder and said cheerfully, “So, Old War Dog, let us go and fight your last battle. We shall see what difference a handful of Gheddan swordsmen can make.”

 

 

 

In space, half-hidden beside the rim edge of the moon where the reflected sunlight might make them more difficult to spot for the first few vital seconds, the last Tri-thruster hung in waiting. On board, Kyle and Kananda had covered the body of Cadel with a blanket and done all they were able to treat Laurya and tend her injuries. They had carried her gently to her bunk, and there Kyle had cut away her tunic to reveal a massive gash and bleeding bruise across her shoulder. The shoulder was broken and the bruising was spreading down her rib cage. The best they could do was to us a numbing spray over the whole general area of damage and then dress the open wound and put her arm into a supporting sling. Then they returned to where Zela still sat intently in her command chair, keeping watch for the first glimpse of the missing Solar Cruiser.

“I fear she may have more internal injuries,” Kyle said quietly. “That damned speaker box hit her across the shoulder and across the stomach. She needs more help than I can give her.”

Zela looked up at him and bit her lip, wondering if any of it mattered anymore. “I will give Raven another hour,” she said at last. “If he does not appear, then we will assume that his ship must have crashed on Earth. Then I will attempt to take Kananda home to Karakhor. They have healers among their priests who may be able to help her.”

Kyle nodded and went back to sit beside Laurya while they waited. Kananda remained standing beside Zela, staring at his home planet which filled her main viewscreen. He still could not comprehend fully all that had happened. The death and destruction had been so swift. One minute a dozen ships had filled the blackness of space between Earth and moon and now, except for their own limping vessel, all had gone. Even the debris had dwindled into fading insignificance. Half of the men and women who had died in those ships had been close friends of his companions. Zela had trained with four out of the five ship commanders and had served with most of their crews. He tried to share her crushing sense of loss. He rested a hand on her shoulder, hoping that the personal touch would somehow help. She covered his hand with her own and smiled up at him weakly. In that moment, they did not realize that there was much worse soon to come.

The first warning was the flashing light on Laurya's console, indicating an incoming deep-space communication from Alpha. Kananda moved over to the vacant chair and flicked the transmission switch as he had watched Laurya do many times during the long voyage. The face of Laton immediately filled the communications screen.

Zela relayed the image to the second screen at her own station and both of them stared at the haggard, almost unrecognizable image of her father. His hair was unkempt, his eyes were wild, his face lined and creased and wet with tears. Both the image and the sound of his voice were flickering and broken.

“Zela—my daughter, I do not know if you can receive this. I do not know if you are alive. But if you are, then please, do not come home. I beg of you—do not attempt to return to Alpha.”

Zela's body went rigid. Her main viewscreen with its picture of Earth was forgotten and she sat as though petrified. Then slowly she reached out and touched the switch that allowed her to reply.

“Father, I hear you. We have reached Earth, but I can still see you and hear you. Your message is breaking up. What is happening?” She asked, and yet she knew. It could only be what they had always feared and dreaded.

“The war has begun.” Laton choked on his reply. “Ghedda has attacked Alpha with all of her vast arsenal of weapons. Their lazer battle stations in orbit have destroyed all of our sea and air forces. The City of Singing Spires is a city of dust and rubble. Almost all of our cities have been destroyed. Alpha is a continent of mushroom clouds.”

He broke off to sob, and then recovered himself briefly to continue. “Ghedda has launched all of her vast stockpile of nuclear missiles, aiming them at our weapon silos in the Fire Mountains. The planet's crust will not withstand these multiple impacts and detonations. Already the missile flights are crossing the Ocean of Storms. They will impact within the next three minutes. Zela, there will not be a planet here for you to come home to.”