“I didn’t lie,” Khriss defended. “This is a scientific expedition, just as Gevin’s was.”
Kenton shook his head with a smile. “I’m sorry, Khriss, but I have difficulty understanding why you all came over here. From what I understand, these ‘nobles’ of yours are fairly important people. What does Dayside have that’s so intriguing?”
“A dream,” Khriss whispered. “A foolish man’s dream.”
Kenton gave her a questioning look.
“Sand mages,” Khriss explained with a sigh. “They’re legends on Darkside. There are dozens of stories told of them—supposed powerful beings that live on dayside, controlling the elements with their magics. The stories are told to children, mostly. No one believes them … or, not seriously at least. No one but Gevin.”
“They’re supposed to be able to … control the elements?” Kenton asked slowly, a strange tone in his voice.
“Yes,” Khriss confessed, suddenly feeling embarrassed at having brought up the topic. What must he think of her? “The stories are foolish things,” she said quickly,
“completely unrealistic. Men always make up tales of the unknown—and in Elis, dayside is the ultimate unknown.”
As they spoke, Khriss noticed Baon hammering his tonk to a slower speed, so he dropped back closer to her own. The warrior waited at a respectful distance, not breaking into the conversation.
“What exactly were these sand mages supposed to be able to do?” Kenton asked.
Khriss frowned. She didn’t know what to make of the odd solemnity to the Daysider’s voice. Was he mocking her again? “Silly things, mostly. Fly trough the air, call up enormous storms of sand. They often grant wishes to travelers lost in the wilderness. Most of the stories agree that they’re impervious to normal weapons, and that they can make objects float with their minds.”
“I see,” Kenton said. “The stories must be fascinating.”
Khriss shrugged. “If you’re a child, I suppose.” Then she turned toward Baon. “What is it, Baon?”
“A question for the daysider,” he explained, bringing his tonk in closer.
“Yes?” Kenton asked curiously.
“You’ve stopped looking over your shoulder,” Baon pointed out.
“What?” Kenton asked with surprise.
“Ever since we left that town, you’ve been nervous. Like you thought someone might follow us.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Kenton said. “I was wrong. They aren’t—”
He was interrupted as a massive man-shaped form exploded from the side of the dune next to Baon, spraying sand into the air as it tackled the warrior and tore him off his tonk.
Chapter Seven
Baon thumped to the sand. His assailant, a bare-chested Kershtian, fell with him. Tonks shuffled nervously, kicking up sand as the two men rolled on the ground. The Kershtian clutched Baon’s robes with one hand and raised a carapace hatchet in the other. A second later, the sand exploded all around them, spewing forth a half-dozen warriors.
Kenton cursed, immediately jumping off his tonk. The move was well-placed, for a moment later he heard the distinctive air-rushings of zinkallin being fired. Three small arrows hissed through the air above him and a fourth snapped off his tonk’s carapace. There was little doubt who the Kershtians were after.
Kenton pressed against the side of his mount, keeping it between himself and the majority of the Kershtians. Only one was on his side—unfortunately, one was more than enough. The warrior, clothed in black carapace armor, was already lowering his zinkall to fire again. Years of training with the Tower’s warriors finally became kinetic as Kenton dropped instinctively, rolling to the ground, dodging a virtually point-blank shot. His tonk bellowed—the arrow must have hit one of the chinks in its carapace—but Kenton ignored the beast as he rolled to his feet only a short distance from his opponent. In his hand he clutched a handful of sand.
The warrior flinched instinctively, spitting out a curse against the Ry’Kensha as Kenton raised his sand. The A’Kar might have found a way to convince them to fight sand masters, but he couldn’t remove millennia-old cultural phobias. Kenton thrust the sand forward, his command for it to obey him as instinctual as the Kershtian’s fear.
Nothing happened.
Kenton cursed, throwing the ineffectual sand at his opponent. The Kershtian, still expecting the sand to kill him, threw up his arms—his face horrified. When the unmastered grains sprayed across his armor, the man barely had a chance to lower his arms in confusion before Kenton’s punch took him in the face. The Kershtian grunted in pain, stumbling backwards. Kenton followed him, reaching down to slide the man’s carapace-sword free from the sheath at his side.
A moment later, pain sliced through Kenton’s arm, and he felt an arrow tear at his robes. It only nicked his skin, but it was enough to remind him that this was not a one-on-one battle. He cried out, thrusting the carapace sword at his opponent’s face. The warrior, who had recovered from the punch, easily blocked the blow with his armored forearm. The attack had not been intended to hit, however.
Kenton spun around the warrior, putting the man’s body between himself and the rest of the battle. The archer who had wounded him still had one arrow left, and as Kenton turned, he was able to pick the man out. He had rounded Kenton’s tonk, and knelt on the sand, his face calm as he aimed his gauntleted forearm for another shot—a shot that was now blocked, however, by his comrade.
Kenton reached out for his human shield—intending to grapple with the man and hold him close in an attempt to keep the others from firing their zinkallin. Unfortunately, the Kershtian realized what was happening, and instead of spinning to face Kenton he simply started running in the opposite direction—leaving Kenton standing stupidly on the sand with no cover. Two other warriors moved around the tonk and prepared to take shots at him.
Kenton looked around wildly, realizing he was trapped. His back was to a dune, and he had opponents on all sides. He barely had time to reach down for a handful of sand and hold it out threateningly as his intended shield moved out of the way.
Kenton froze. He intended to scream out warnings in broken Kershtian, but his voice caught in his throat. Fear choked his words. All he had was the sand clutched in his sweating fist.
Come to life! his mind ordered the sand. In all his life, he had never needed sand mastery so urgently. Please!
A deafening explosion sounded, causing Kenton to cry out in shock and pain. One of the warriors’s heads exploded.
Gore splattered across the white sands, and the already spooked tonks dropped to the sand in fright, burrowing down until only the tips of their shells were visible.
What …? Kenton thought in confusion, his ears ringing. At first, he thought it had been his sand—but the handful still sat in his fist, unmastered. Then he saw Baon.
The black-skinned warrior stood tall, some sort of steel tube held in his hand. Smoke rose in the air before him. The Kershtian that had attacked Baon lay face down in the sand, his neck twisted at a gruesome angle.
Calmly, the darksider turned his weapon on another one of the archers, and a second later there was an explosive crack. Carapace armor shattered like glass, and the warrior was thrown backwards several feet. When the man fell to the ground, Kenton could see a hole in his back a handspan wide.
The hard-faced darksider turned his weapon on a third man. The Kershtian stared at his opponent for a moment, his eyes wide with horror, before breaking into a terrified run. The other three joined him, screaming in frightened Kershtian as they disappeared around a dune. The sound of galloping sandlings sounded a few moments later.
#
Khriss sat stunned on her tonk’s back. Her legs were buried up to the knees in sand—as was most of her mount. Only the tonk’s back and the stump of his broken horn were visible. She would have joined him beneath the sand, had she been able to get her paralyzed muscles to move.
“Oh Shella, oh Shella, oh Shella … .” she heard herself mumbling as s
he stared dumbly at the remains of the men who had attacked them.
Fortunately, the warriors had ignored her during the attack, instead focusing their attention on Baon and Kenton. The battle had happened almost as if she and the professors weren’t there, churning around them as if they were barriers rather than targets. And then the pistol fire … .
Khriss had never seen a man shot before. A few months earlier, while running the Dynastic barricade, they had lost Captain Deral—but that had happened while the warriors were out scouting. She had never seen the bodies—Baon had rushed them away from the site quickly, warning that they had been discovered.
Now she had seen a man die. The scientist in her noted that it was much messier than she had expected. She had assumed the musket balls entered the body like an arrow, piercing the skin and leaving a small hole. That was not the case. The balls smashed more than they pierced, tearing wide holes or, in the case of the man who had been hit in the head, completely destroying.
The logical side of her mind soon gave way before the disturbed side, however, and the scientist was forced to retreat before a far more awesome force—trauma. She closed her eyes to the death, breathing deeply and shaking before the horrible scene.
#
Kenton was shaken, but once again his training came to his aid. He discarded the unused carapace sword, instead pulling a complete sheath, weapon, and belt from one of the fallen men—trying his best not to look at the man’s stump of a neck. Then he turned to Baon.
“We should go,” he informed, his voice more calm than he felt. “Kershtians never abandon the bodies of their fallen—they believe a man must be buried in deep sand lest his soul be lost to wander the kerla.”
Baon nodded, replacing his strange weapon in a sheath at his side. Kenton regarded it for a moment, remembering its incredible power. He had seen the weapons at Baon’s sides, but had assumed them to be instruments of some sort. Who could have imagined a weapon so small, yet so destructive?
Kenton shook his head, moving over to begin raising the tonks. Ask later. Right now, we need to move.
“My first battle!” a voice suddenly exclaimed. Kenton turned to find Acron, his eyes strangely excited, sitting astride his mostly-buried mount. “I say, Kenton—does this sort of thing happen often?” He looked … eager. As if he had been treated to a performance of some kind.
“Acron, for once, please shut up,” a pained voice came from a short distance away.
The elderly Cynder still sat atop his own mount as well, but he was obviously less-enthused about the experience than Acron. Kenton noted with concern that the older man was clutching his left arm, the end of a zinkall arrow sticking from between his bloodied fingers.
Kenton cursed, rushing over to Cynder.
“It’s nothing,” the linguist said with a slight gasp of pain as Kenton examined the wound.
With a simple tug, Kenton pulled the arrow out of Cynder’s arm. It slid out easily—it no longer had a head.
“What … ?” Cynder asked with confusion, regarding the tip of the arrow.
“The arrowhead wasn’t treated,” Kenton explained, pulling out his qido. “The carapace dissolved. Grit your teeth, this is going to hurt.”
Cynder barely had time to inhale in preparation as Kenton cleaned the wound. The linguist finally broke down and cried out in agony as Kenton forced as much as the dissolved arrowhead out of the wound as possible, then bound it with a strip of cloth.
“What are you doing to him?” Baon demanded.
“Carapace can cause a wound to fester,” Kenton explained, stepping back and reaching down to rap Cynder’s tonk on the horn with the tip of his sword sheath. The creature immediately began to unbury itself, shaking and wiggling as it climbed out of the sand.
Baon watched the process with calculating eyes, then began to move opposite Kenton, rapping horns and bringing tonks out of the sand. Kenton paused beside Khriss’s tonk. The girl had obviously been disquieted by the battle—her eyes were closed, and she was mumbling softly to herself as she rocked back and forth. Kenton waited hesitantly for a moment, then reached out to shake her on the shoulder.
“Khrissalla?” he asked softly.
The girl exhaled deeply, then opened her eyes. “I’m all right,” she said weakly.
Kenton nodded slowly, then reached over to tap his sword against the tonk’s stump. The creature began to move, raising itself from the sand.
Khriss frowned, watching the process. “Why …?” she began, focusing on the tonks and, as far as Kenton could tell, intentionally keeping her eyes off the three bodies. “Why would they develop such odd behavior? Surely hiding beneath the sand doesn’t protect them from predators.”
Kenton smiled. If she could ask questions, then she was probably all right. “It isn’t to protect them from predators,” he explained. “This is what they do in a sandstorm. Tonks have very weak minds—whenever they get confused, they assume they’re in a sandstorm and bury themselves beneath the ground.”
Kenton tapped the tonk, sending it to wander over and join the rest of the beasts, then he turned to find Baon. The dark warrior was squatting on the sand beside the first warrior that had attacked—the strange unarmored one. Kenton joined him, watching as Baon rolled the body over, revealing a face crusted with sand.
“Will the linguist be all right?” Baon asked quietly.
“He should be,” Kenton replied. “Melted carapace rots easily unless it is dried properly. I think I got the wound clean enough, however.”
Baon nodded quietly, then gestured toward the dead man on the ground before him. “Recognize him?” Baon asked.
Kenton shook his head. “Not only don’t I know him, Baon, but I’ve never seen anything like him before,” he confessed. “Kershtians never fight unarmored, yet this man attacks wearing little more than a loin cloth. He also shaved his head—and I’ve never seen a Kershtian do that.”
Baon grunted, reaching out to wipe the sand from the man’s forehead. A pale scar stood out against his pale skin. An ‘X’ surrounded by a square. “What do you make of that?” Baon asked.
“The square is a symbol for priests,” Kenton explained. “But the ‘X’ inside it is the marking of a warrior. I’ve never seen both together before.”
“Whoever he is, he saved our lives,” Baon said.
Kenton gave him a questioning look.
“He leapt out before the rest of them,” Baon explained. “He ruined the ambush. If this man hadn’t been so eager to attack, then we wouldn’t be standing here right now.” Baon rose, dusting the sand from his knee. “Or, at least, you wouldn’t be. Why did they want to kill you, daysider?” he asked bluntly.
“For something I used to be,” Kenton answered, rising as well.
Baon searched Kenton’s eyes, obviously unsatisfied with the answer. He asked no further questions, however. He stooped briefly, removing the zinkall from the priest’s arm by cutting its straps, then walked back to his tonk.
#
“It’s called a pistol,” Khriss said.
Kenton looked up slowly. There was a haunted expression on his face—one of sorrow. He had grown quiet after the attack, almost unresponsive. During the past few hours, he had ignored Khriss’s every attempt to draw him into conversation—an attitude that she found increasingly frustrating. She wanted to know why they had been attacked, who those men had been, and if they would attack again. Unfortunately, Kenton wasn’t talking. So, Khriss had decided to try a new approach. Instead of asking questions, she tried to fuel Kenton sense of curiosity. It would have worked for her, after all.
“The weapon,” Khriss continued, her tonk riding along beside her own. “It’s called a pistol. You were probably wondering about it.”
Kenton shrugged, the same sense of melancholy in his eyes. Khriss pulled out the spare pistol, the one Flennid had dropped, and inspected it as she talked.
“They’re relatively new to darkside,” Khriss explained. “Less than a century old. Only
a few of the nations have them—the Dynasty is very proficient at keeping new technology from spreading through its provinces. Scythe—the current monarch of the Dynasty, something like a king or an emperor, though he is much more powerful than either word implies—knows how dangerous knowledge can be.”
Kenton eyed the weapon for a moment, and Khriss caught a glimmer of interest therein. “So, it doesn’t use air pressure at all?” Kenton finally asked.
“No, it uses gunpowder,” Khriss replied, smiling slightly to herself.
“Gunpowder?” he asked with confusion.
“A type of explosive powder,” Khriss explained, handing the unloaded weapon toward him.
Kenton frowned, accepting the pistol and turning it over in his hands. “Gunpowder,” he mumbled, looking down the gun’s barrel then playing with its hammer experimentally. “It must be powerful, whatever it is. The sandling carapace Kershtians use for armor is nearly as hard as steel, but Baon’s attack shot through it with ease.”
Khriss nodded.
“How many times can this thing fire?” the daysider asked, cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger a few times.
“Just once,” Khriss explained.
“But—”
“Baon’s pistols have two barrels,” Khriss said. “They’re officer’s weapons, very well-crafted.”
Kenton smiled slightly, handing the pistol back to Khriss. “So he was bluffing,” he said. “He couldn’t have killed that third Kershtian.”
Khriss shrugged. “Not unless he pulled out his other pistol.”
Kenton looked up, looking a little less saddened than before. After the attack, they had continued to ride south, at first nervously—fearing that the strange warriors would return with reinforcements.
In fact, Khriss thought the group strangely calm, considering how close they had come to death just hours before. Up ahead, the overweight Acron chatted jollily with Cynder—or, more accurately, Acron chatted while Cynder rode in relative silence. The linguist was recovering well from his wound—there appeared to be no signs of an infection.