The rift here on Uyadensk was not the place where Nasim could be used. It never had been. Ashan had been wrong in the beginning, and she had been wrong in the end. Like a jeweler calculating the perfect angle with which to strike the uncut stone, the Maharraht had understood that the key was not the rift on Uyadensk, but the one on Duzol-not because it was the largest, but because by ripping it wider it would cause a chain of events that would lead to the destruction they hoped to wreak.
“Grigory, stop!” Alesya yelled through Atiana’s voice. “Stop!”
Grigory didn’t listen. He couldn’t. He was locked in swordplay, parrying the fierce slashes from a tall Maharraht warrior.
That was when it struck.
A musket ball.
Without warning.
Straight through Atiana’s chest.
The enemy on the knoll had inexplicably pulled away, leaving Nikandr’s men free to face the Maharraht to the rear. The two forces crashed together. Men shouted as steel fell upon steel. In moments, their line was complete chaos. Blood fell upon the snow as soldiers dropped on both sides.
Nikandr parried the attacks of a warrior with a long black mustache. He retreated, keeping his parries slow, baiting the other man. When he finally overextended his advantage, Nikandr sidestepped quickly and drove his shashka through the man’s gut. He withdrew quickly and slashed the man across the throat before he could attempt a dying stroke.
His men were in disarray. There were less than a dozen left against twenty Maharraht. It would be over in moments.
But then a cry rose from beyond the knoll. Nearly two dozen streltsi came running over the hill.
“Hold, men! Hold!”
They did, and soon after the other group of streltsi fell upon the Maharraht. None of the enemy withdrew, however. None turned to run. They fought to the death, the last cutting four streltsi down before he took a musket shot at point-blank range through his chest, and even then he grabbed the end of the unfortunate soldier’s musket and swung his shamshir high over his head and swept it across the other man’s neck. The strelet’s head fell against the beaten and bloody snow, emitting a sound like a fallen gourd.
The Maharraht tried to fight on, but he fell to his knees while stumbling against the uneven, blood-matted snow. He blinked several times before the streltsi nearby fell upon him, unleashing their fury, their swords rising and falling and cutting him into barely recognizable pieces.
And then Nikandr saw the commander of the streltsi.
It was Grigory.
And he was pointing a musket directly at Nikandr’s chest. “Lay down arms, Khalakovo.”
Nikandr stood there, blood trickling across his elbow and along his forearm. He shook his head and allowed his shashka to fall to the trampled snow at his feet. They were in no position to disobey, and he would not sacrifice his men for one last, meaningless gasp. “Lower your arms.”
“My Lord Prince,” a Bolgravy and esyatnik called from the top of the knoll. “It’s Lady Vostroma. She says we are not in the right place.”
“I can spare no time for her now.”
“She is calling for you. She’s been shot.”
Nikandr’s breath fell away.
Grigory’s face went white. He turned and with two of his men and a havaqiram ran toward the top of the rise.
Nikandr tried to follow but was stopped by Grigory’s men. He railed against them. “Let me pass!” he shouted. But they would not.
Grigory turned, pausing to stare at Nikandr with a look on his face like he was considering allowing him to come. He looked-in that one brief moment-like a boy who was having trouble with the mantle that had fallen into his lap. It looked like he desperately wanted help, even from a man he called an enemy. But then his expression hardened, and he motioned for the streltsi to lead Nikandr back toward his men.
Rehada was being held closely, her circlet gone. Of Nikandr’s men less than twenty remained. They stood there, haggard, and it was then that Nikandr realized that Ashan was missing. He scanned the bodies of the fallen, becoming frantic when he didn’t see Ashan among them, but when the wind began to blow across the battlefield, he knew that the arqesh had managed to slip away.
The wind gained in intensity, lifting new waves of snow from the ground and pushing men back who were unprepared. It ebbed for one moment, giving everyone a chance to regain their footing, but then, as if the brief pause had been an inhalation, the wind howled with the force of a gale. It sounded like a great, ravenous beast ready to devour them all.
Nikandr fell to the ground as men were swept from their feet. Their kolpak hats flew off their heads as wet snow and dirt pelted them. One man even fired his musket in the direction of the wind, perhaps seeing something he thought was the enemy. The next moment, he toppled backwards and was lost in a rain of white.
The wind cut fiercely against the Vostroman soldiers, pushing them from the lip of the knoll, and Nikandr understood what Ashan was trying to do.
“This way!” he shouted from hands and knees. He dare not stand up lest he be blown about like the men standing only a few paces away. In fact, the intensity increased even more, forcing him to drop to the ground and lay prone.
He didn’t know if his men had heard his order, but when he was able to rise, the sotnik was at his elbow, pulling him up and helping him stumble toward the opposite side of the hill.
Rehada and Ashan caught up with the group just as they reached the place where Grigory’s men had huddled. There was a wide swath of matted snow and a fair amount of blood, but it was otherwise empty.
They quickly chased after using the trail they had left behind. They found a skiff, its sails cut to shreds, and an imprint in the snow of another that had recently left.
“What do we do, My Lord?” the sotnik asked.
“I don’t know,” Nikandr said listlessly. “I have no idea where they would go.”
“I know,” Rehada said. “They go to Duzol.”
CHAPTER 63
Atiana realized she was in the air again. She felt light, not only because she was flying through the stormy weather in the bottom of a skiff but because she felt wholly unencumbered by her mortal frame. She felt, in fact, like a havahezhan must: free and ethereal.
She fell unconscious. When she woke again, it was to a jostling of the skiff. They had landed, and someone was standing over her, asking her where they needed to go. He looked familiar, but for the life of her she couldn’t place him.
“The spire on the fort,” she said weakly.
“You are sure?” he asked.
It was a man she didn’t care for-she knew this much-but she saw no reason to withhold the information.
“I am.” It felt like each word weighed ten stone.
He looked down on her, ungracious.
“We go,” he said, though she understood it was not to her.
“And the Lady Princess?”
A pause.
“Leave her.”
Flakes of snow fell upon her face, soft touches of ice upon deadened skin.
The sound of footsteps through snow were all around her, but then they faded, leaving only the nearby waves and the wind as it whistled through the trees. She could see neither of these things, but she realized with a growing certainty that she could feel them. The snow beneath her fingers, the grass beneath the snow, the earth through which the grass extended its roots, and the bedrock of the island beneath the soft, pliable earth. She felt all of this and more.
And soon… Soon…
She hears the call of a lonely heron, hears its mate over a mile away. She feels the weight of a nearby copse of trees upon the earth, small in comparison to its larger sister to the south. She feels the wind as it brushes against the evergreen branches, the pine cones as they are tugged free to fall against the snow, the rabbits as they huddle in their warrens, waiting for the storm to pass.