Chapter 30

The Run

With incredulous eyes, Barreth Forlo watched it come.

The wave was enormous. There were tales of such phenomena, from long ago. In the First Destruction, swells like it had rushed across the face of Taladas, wiping out entire kingdoms and drowning millions. In the years before, when Aurim held sway, wizards and emperors—and emperor-wizards—had summoned giant waves to punish their enemies. Once, according to a talc Forlo had heard at court in Kristophan, a tyrant had called on the sea to destroy an entire city—Forlo couldn't remember its name, or the emperor's. One day, the citadel had stood proud and silver-walled on Aurim's western shore. The next, nothing had remained but rubble and floating bodies, in brine frothed red by sharks.

This was like that.

The wave came on like a mountain, three hundred feet high and capped with white foam that gnashed like giant, ever-hungry fangs. It wasn't the blue of summer water, or the greens of the shallows in the south. No, it was angry water, storm water, winter water: gray as steel with a heart that was almost black. It roared down the chasm of the Run, the world's largest flash flood, swallowing the dead sea serpents and smashing the bared shipwrecks to flinders. Used to the gentle ebb and flow of the tides, the debris dotting the strait's floor could not stand against the weight of the swiftly moving torrent. Cliffs crumbled on either shore and great stones and avalanches of earth cracked and slid into the maelstrom below. Vast, billowing clouds of spray rose high into the air and drifted south on the wind. The noise the wave made was the voice of a thousand angry dragons, all roaring and breathing death. The tower shook so violently underfoot that, for a wild moment, Forlo feared it would collapse beneath him. He gripped the battlements.

Most of the Uigan were still in the Tiderun, waiting for the forefront of the horde to advance so they could come ashore. Now they panicked like spooked birds, scattering this way and that, doomed but trying whatever they could to escape. Some bolted headlong down the strait, mindlessly trying to outrun what was coming. Others turned north, in the wild hope of getting back to the far shore. A scattering gave up their treasured horses and dashed for the cliffs, trying to climb to safety.

None of them made it.

The wave came on, merciless and unstoppable. Time seemed to slow as it towered above the barbarians, casting a horrible shadow over them. From above, Forlo saw the riders look up at the wall of water, eyes wide and mouths slack with terror. He felt sick, pitying them though they were his enemies. It was no way for a warrior to die. There was no glory in it. And there were so many—thousands, entire clans' worth. The Tamire would be a nation of widows and orphans.

The wave slammed into the horde, and in an instant it simply disappeared. Days from then, many miles to the west, the fisherfolk would find hundreds of bodies—men and horses alike—scattered like driftwood along the Run—bloated, broken, and swarming with scuttling crabs. For the moment, though, they simply vanished as if they had never existed, the fighting men of the Uigan obliterated by the sea's fury.

As the wave roared past, carrying on in its thundering journey, a lesser hammer of water rose up the ravine, clawing up and snatching away the rear ranks of those who thought themselves safe on dry land. Many horsemen flew from their saddles, knocked through the air by the force of the blow. Others went under, dragged away by the undertow. Trees groaned as they tore from their roots, then swept along, smashing into barbarians. Rocks tumbled from the canyon's walls, crushing those beneath. Men tried to ride forward, hacking with curved sabers and thrusting with spears, killing their fellows in the mad crush to escape the devouring flood.

Then, finally, the deluge stopped. The water slowed, the swell lessened… stopped… and started to roll back, leaving corpses shattered on the stones and dangling motionless from branches. Most were gone, snatched away into the roaring flow.

It grew very quiet. The din of battle was gone and the cries of the dying were faint. Both sides stood still, the survivors of the Sixth Legion—Forlo felt a twist in his gut to see no sign of Grath among them—staring warily at the Uigan. Some of the surviving barbarians stared back, but most had turned to look at where their sword-brothers had been only a hundred-count before. Gone, now, like they had never been born, the sea raging in their place. Ten thousand Uigan, now reduced to barely eight hundred. Probably much less.

A miracle, the clerics would call it. Forlo knew it was no such thing, though: no god had intervened here. He had never called on them to do so. No, there was something else at work. Magic, mightier than any he had ever known, than any seen since the time of Aurim, and the city—Am Dura, it came to him now—drowned by Maladar the Faceless.

Maladar.

The Hooded One.

He understood now, and it knocked the wind out of him. He stood stunned, realizing what must have happened, leagues away in Coldhope. He saw clearly in his mind's eye the statue, saw Shedara standing before it, magic seething in the air. He heard her command the spirit within the stone, felt it reply, and felt the oceans hear its call and begin to rise.

He felt the urge to laugh and held it back. The statue, the Sargas-be-damned statue, had done this! If he'd given it up, if he'd given it to the Silvanaes, the horde would have run rampant across the League. Now the Ulgan were shattered down to a handful, and the riders' spirit was broken by the shock of it all. Their people were destroyed. The plains and steppes would be different places, now. Emptier places.

The fighting began again, uncertain at first, then with growing ferocity. But everything had changed. The Uigan were not as fierce any more, their blades slowed by horror—both at what had just happened and at their new position. They were no longer the tip of a great spear poised to drive through their foes, but a scrap of a slaughtered army, trapped between steel and the sea. The soldiers were still outnumbered—some three hundred had lived this long, by Forlo's guess—but the horde's destruction awoke something new in them, something none had dared to feel when the battle began.

Hope. They could win the fight.

So the line reformed, thin but strong, and held firm against the disheartened riders. In fact, before long, the defenders started pushing forward, driving the Uigan back toward the rushing water. The barbarians did not run, for there was nowhere to go. They stood and fought, backing up slowly, stumbling over jetsam and burst corpses as they gave ground back down the slope. On the cliffs, the remaining archers loosed their last shots into the throng, then drew their shortswords and charged back along the ridges to the canyon's mouth, to bolster the rest of the soldiers in the fight.

Forlo scanned the battleground, searching for one figure. But of the prince in bronze mail there was no sign: like Grath, the enemy chieftain seemed to have fallen in the fighting. His body must be lying somewhere—now drawing crows. A pity, that. Forlo had wanted to face the Boyla, to see the despair in his eyes at the horrible way he'd lost. To put a sword through him for what he'd done to Malton and the other colonies, and again for what he'd nearly done to Coldhope and Essana.

Another thought came to him then, making him shake his head. Iver. I should have waited, he said to himself. The lad has the wrong banner. No matter, though: at worst, he would have to send riders out to intercept Shedara and his wife. It might take a while, but they would be found and kept safe.

Smiling, he drew his sword and turned to descend the steps. One more blade on the line would bring the battle to a quicker close. He wasn't needed in the tower any more. Victory was coming to them. It was time to go join his men.

Forlo started down the stairs—then stopped. He'd descended only three steps, and froze, listening to sounds from below. Someone was coming up. No—something. And it sounded very large.

His grip tightening around his sword, he climbed back up to the top of the steps, set his back to the crumbling wall, and waited.

Soaked with spray, Hult stared at the drenched earth behind him. Cliffs crumbled, trees toppled and the earth was reduced to slogging muck. That and a few bodies were all that remained. The hammer of water retreated down the gully, taking with it the greatest horde the Tamire had ever seen. Gone, all gone, the Lost Road become the Road of the Lost.

He felt numb, sick, and cold. Thousands of his people had died in a horrible instant, devoured by a sea that had appeared out of nowhere. Even if they survived the day, the Uigan could not raid any deeper into the League. And if the water remained, they were trapped there. The riders of the plains were no boat-builders. The bull-men would hunt them down and put them to the sword, day by day. They would have to be lucky indeed to return home alive. It was over.

Jijin, he wondered as he gazed upon the drenched destruction, why have you forsaken us?

A roar of inarticulate fury caught his attention and made him turn back toward the front. There, surrounded by soldiers who stood as shocked and still as the surviving Uigan, stood the Boyla—or rather, the white tiger he had become. The great cat was gazing down the slope, his red eyes flashing. Madness in them, but beneath the beastly form he understood as well as anyone what had just happened to his horde. To him. Hult watched as the last strands of Chovuk's sanity frayed, then snapped. The tiger crouched to spring.

"Master, wait!" he cried.

But Chovuk was beyond caring now. He leaped upon the nearest soldier, ripping the unfortunate man to red ribbons with his claws. Fangs tore and a gurgling voice screamed, then stopped, blood misting the air. Dripping crimson, the tiger hurtled into the defenders. He caught a grazing spear wound across his flank and ignored it, then caught another warrior in his jaws, dragged him shrieking for several paces, then let go and trampled him into the ground.

Some of the riders rallied, but most fell back, desperate and anguished. A few dropped their weapons and surrendered, and took blades in the heart for it. The League's defenders were in no mind to take prisoners, particularly ones they couldn't ransom. Chovuk continued to shred his way through the ranks, alone, pushing madly ahead.

Hult understood why, glancing up at the tower. In his berserk rage, his master was leaving his men to die so he could face the soldiers' commander. It was the only triumph he might salvage, the one victory he might extract from his defeat.

Hult bit his lip. He was tenach. He had sworn an oath always to be at the Boyla's side, unto death. Raising his shuk, he plunged forward, into the fast-closing gap the tiger left behind.

He almost didn't see a sword whistling toward his face, and ducked so late that he felt the wind of the blade against his shaven head. He lashed out at the weapon's owner with his shuk, rammed the blade halfway to the hilt in the man's stomach, jerked it free, and shoved onward as the soldier dropped to his knees. A moment later, another soldier loomed up before him, a heavy mace held high. Hult twisted aside as the weapon came crashing down, spun, and struck off the man's hands at the wrists. Screaming, his maimed opponent stumbled back and fell. Hult didn't bother to finish him, but pushed on to the next soldier, the next, and the next. He killed three more, wounded seven, and did not look back at all.

Then the battle was behind him—already it was a rout, the soldiers pushing his fellow riders back and back toward the sea. Hult plunged into the pine woods, saber flashing to hack branches out of his way. Some of the trees were snapped in half and others were broken and sagging: marks of the white tiger's passing, curving to the left and uphill, toward the tower. Hult followed the trail, bleeding and tired, legs and lungs burning, until he finally caught sight of white and black, flashing through the trees.

"Master!" he cried.

The tiger spun and leaped. It hit him hard, bore him to the ground, and knocked the shuk from his hand. The breath was crushed out of him. He could only lie still as claws pierced his leather armor and gore-dripping fangs opened above his ashen face. A single twitch would kill him.

"No," he begged. "I am your tenach, Chovuk Boyla. I am your friend."

The great cat snarled, the carrion stink of its breath gagging him. Warm blood dripped on him, some of it his own. He waited, eyes open, pleading.

After what seemed like hours, recognition dawned amid the howling turmoil in the tiger's eyes. It drew back, blinking, then climbed off him and slunk away through the undergrowth. Aching and limping, Hult got back to his feet, found his sword, and stumbled after.

The ground grew rocky and the trees thinned. Then there was the tower: moss-bearded and ivy-strangled, with fallen shards of its missing upper reaches scattered about its base. Chovuk slipped through a gap in its crumbled wall, and Hult edged in after. It was dim inside, on the bracken-wracked flagstones of its floor. The air was close and warm. The tiger was already climbing the stairs, growling deep in its throat. It had the scent of its prey, atop the ruined spire. Hult followed, sword ready.

He'd expected to find several men, but there was only one: weary and defiant, a veteran with a gray-frosted beard showing beneath his helm. He had good armor, a long, straight sword, and a round shield with a gilded boss. He had a red surcoat and a blue cloak, with a gold commander's blazon on both of them.

The soldier said something, but it was in the tongue of the League, guttural and harsh to Hult's ears. The words meant nothing to him. When he was done, he raised his sword in salute. Hult did the same, a courtesy between warriors.

The tiger growled, tensing to leap—

—and stopped, letting out a startled whimper. All at once, the air shimmered and the skin-prickling feeling of magic swirled about the tower's top. Their foe must have felt it too, for he drew back another step, and the furrows of his brow deepened. Hult glanced about, sure he would see the cloaked figure of the Teacher nearby, watching. But there was no one.

A howl pulled his attention back to the scene before him. The sound of abject despair came from Chovuk's mouth. It was so terrible that Hult felt the sudden, wild urge to turn and flee.

He stayed, though, and a moment later understood his master's anguish. The magic he'd felt wasn't some new spell arising; it was an old one departing. As Hult watched, the tiger's form rippled and shrank, bones crackling and fur falling out. Teeth shortened and lost their points. Red eyes turned back to shining black. Bit by bit, the skin-change wore off.

When it was done, the great cat was gone and Chovuk Boyla stood hunched in its place, naked, unarmed, ancient looking—and utterly broken. As Hult watched, the Tiger of the Tamire, the prince of all the Uigan, sank to his knees and wept.