Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Dryden did not wait to see if the enemy would come again. He rode hard back to the line of An-Dakal cavalry. The line was thin, broken in places. Horses and men lay strewn about the ground, clad in both the An-Beya and An-Dakal colours. He rode past dying thrashing horses and men crawling and begging for their lives. The survivors of the An-Dakal army rallied and tried to line back up, though they had suffered heavy losses. Dryden recognised the An-Dakal banner a ways down the line, and he rode hard for it, a few of his men riding hard after him, trying to keep pace with the mighty Bellephoron. Dryden’s heart fell as he rode through the carnage towards the place where the An-Dakal leaders were. Their guard was circled tight, blocking view. Several men were on the ground in the middle. Dryden leapt from his saddle and strode through the guards. He sheathed his sword; his hand was in agony as he took it from the hilt, the flesh of his palm sticking to the metal. None of the An-Dakal guards tried stopping him. His heart dropped as he came through and saw the scene before him.

  Sudal, the son of Kavala and heir of An-Dakal, lay dying. Kavala was wounded too, though not mortally, it appeared. Kavala sat on the sand, his son’s head in his lap, tears flowing from his golden eyes. The soft, young face of Sudal had gone ashen as the blood left him. His gut was torn open. Dryden could see there would be no saving him. Blood flecked his lips. Fear and pain were in his eyes. He swallowed and then coughed raggedly, more blood spattered around his mouth. Kavala did not scream in anger, only wept bitterly as his son died in his arms. The dirt around the young man was dark with blood. His death was not long in coming. He spoke to his father, words in Vuruni. Kavala said something to his son softly through the tears, and then the boy was gone. Dryden let him have as long as he dared; the enemy could still return and finish them.

  “Sir, we must regroup. Kurush is wounded by mine own hand, but they may yet come again,” Dryden said softly.

  Kavala did not respond; he held his son, his face pressed to his son’s head.

  “Sir, I am sorry about your son, but we cannot delay; grief must wait,” Dryden pressed gently.

  After a moment, Kavala spoke, “I do not blame you; you must not be sorry for this. I blame only Kurush.” Kavala laid his dead son down on in the dirt, dusted himself off, and stood. Then he reached up and felt his shoulder where he, too, was bleeding. He looked at the wound and the blood on his hand as if realising for the first time that he was hurt as well. He had not noticed during the battle and his grief.

  “You must be tended to,” Dryden gestured to his wound.

  “If grief can wait, so can this wound,” Kavala replied coldly. “Yet, vengeance has the patience of a petulant child; we must attend to it.”

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  “Your hand,” the man pointed to it, “Can you fight?”

  Dryden looked down at it for the first time. Fear of what awaited him had kept him from looking closely at it. The skin was red, blistered, and torn where it had touched the hilt of his sword. It oozed blood from where the skin had been ripped away when he had released the sword. He wondered if it would heal or if it would fester, and he would lose the hand to the surgeons. He had seen men lose their hands for lesser wounds than this. He knew he could not wield his sabre, “I can lead men, but no, I think my hand is not fit for battle now.”

  “How did you come by such a wound?”

  “Kurush’s sorcery. My blade turned it aside and burned me thus.”

  “Indeed? Is it a blade of old Styrania? Such blades are the very rarest kind.”

  “It is. It came to me from Colonel Gorst.”

  “Legend says such a blade goes only to the man who kills its master. Did you kill this Colonel?”

  “He honourably took his own life to keep from being captured by the enemy,” Dryden replied.

  “Did you have any hand in his death?”

  “It was by my pistol. I gave it to him so he could die with honour.”

  “Ahh, and so the blade came to you.”

  “I suppose so, sir, but we should not tarry here discussing such things. We must regroup.”

  “Let my man here attend to your hand, at least. I would not let your Vastrum doctors attend to that wound, or you will certainly lose the hand.”

  A man came over from among the retinue of Kavala. He was a man of slight stature. He had big dark brown eyes, a short, broken nose, and a deep scar from his chin to his scalp that only just missed his right eye. He did not speak but took Dryden’s hand gently, rubbed a soft yet thick salve upon it, and then wrapped it gently but securely in a silk bandage. Then, he said something in Vuruni that Dryden did not understand.

  Kavala translated for him, “He says do not use it. Change the bandage once a day. He will gift you more of the salve. Your hand will heal if you are not stupid with it. He stresses that you cannot fight with the hand this way; you have already done enough damage to it.”

  “Thank you,” Dryden said. “We ought to dig in now, Kavala. We need a perimeter. Then we should make contact with General Winslow to the west of the city and link up to prevent Kurush from resupplying…”

  He was cut off as a sound like thunder rolled over the whole city, but it came not from the thunderheads that loomed just to the east. All heads turned to look. Smoke rose from the hills to the north and west. The artillery of the two armies of Vastrum was firing. The bombardment of the city had begun. Dryden watched spellbound as the shot from the cannon ripped down into the city. Haddock and Winslow had chosen incendiary shot. It burst just above the level of the houses in massive explosions that sent bright, burning shrapnel raining down on the city below. It took only minutes for the shrapnel to catch the wooden frames of the buildings alight. Black smoke rose from the city. Wind whipped through from the east and soon flames rose about the sprawling slums, burning across the valley. All stood transfixed on the destruction of the city below.

  “Let it be as you say,” Kavala said softly as they watched the burning of Vurun.

  All through the rest of the day, the city burned. The 13th and the remaining men of Kavala’s small army dug into the hillside and fortified their position with trenches. Riders were sent to link up with General Winslow. By the end of the day, half the city was a smouldering ruin, and the encirclement was complete. All through the night and into the next day, the guns of Vastrum thundered death and fire down onto the city. Dawn greeted them with a grim sight: a blackened city of burned homes. Smoke still wafted up slowly from the smouldering embers that were once the indigo city of Vurun.