Whispers of the Skyborne (Devices of War Book 3) (44 page)

I found the girl who held the cup of water for our
lethara.
I knelt beside her, grasping her arm. “I want you to stay out here. Do you understand me?”

Her dark eyes were huge in the darkened tunnel. The only light we had was the glow of the blue dragons and our
lethara.
The girl nodded.

I looked up at the skitter unit standing guard over her. “You’ll stay and protect her?”

“He will stay,” Haji said in my left ear. “We know the importance of your
lethara
.”

As the one creature capable of commanding and controlling all the menagerie, he was the most vital aspect of the ship. The
Layal
could practically fly herself. Not quite, but it did, at times, seem possible.

I crept to the rock wall, finding it mostly by feel and the absence of light than by any other method. The light from the land eaters reflected off the armor of the remaining six skitters as they were the only people in our group who wore anything reflective.

“How do you want to do this?” Haji asked in my ear.

I scanned what I could see in the other cavern. They had nowhere to go. Trapped, probably counting on the rigger and the destroyers to deflect anything we might lay on them. “Send in the blue dragons,” I ordered.

“And the air jellies?” Haji asked. “They would be faster and more effective. The dragons move slowly, especially from this distance.”

A fair statement, but we weren’t short on time. The storm was coming in, yes, but we were underground and the
Layal
was grounded. Could she be hurt down there? Yes. But she was safer down there with the skeletal crew she currently housed than in the air where she could be attacked.

Though, she could be attacked on the ground as well.

The only thing working in my favor was that storm. It needed to hurry up to annul any ground force attacks on my ship.

“Just the blue dragons for now. Once they’ve reached the first line, we’ll launch the air jellies and falcons.”

Haji nodded the head of his skitter, which was still odd for me. I knew his head was located somewhere in the chest of that thing, but I couldn’t see it.

We waited, glancing at each other, our eyes seeing more and more as they grew accustomed to the near complete lack of light. I had nearly a complete crew still. We’d lost a few on the last destroyer, their crew being a bit more cunning than the previous two, but no fatalities. At least, not yet. They’d been alive enough to be carried or helped out. The path up to the mouth was long and difficult and the only issue I could foresee in the next stage of the battle would be the storm cutting us off from the ship if we had more wounded.

If.

I snorted to myself. We would. There was no way around that.

We watched the glowing slime trails of the blue dragons.

The men standing guard didn’t seem to notice. They spoke to one another around the noise of the land eaters just behind them.

Just a little more.

I looked around the shadows I couldn’t penetrate and wondered how far within the mountain we’d traveled. Far enough that the
Layal
could no longer reach us. The silence in my right ear was evidence of that.

I shook my head and refocused. Soon now. Soon, we would storm that cavern and reclaim Pleron City.

It didn’t take Nix long to find another group of men along the base of the mountain. They waited in clumps for new orders. She’d already forced two squadrons of men over the cliffs. There was no sense in keeping so many alive. She only needed one. One alone, away from the protection of others.

The last squad had eighteen men. She gave them a choice. Help her or walk.

Three of the seventeen men had already walked over the cliff. Nonchalantly, Nix folded her arms over her chest, her new Mark twisting in the air above her, flicking away the flying leaves and bits of debris filling the pounding wind.

The storm was nearly upon them. She’d have to find shelter, but before that happened, she needed her one man. The last man standing in this group would serve her fine.

She released a bored sigh as the cry of yet another man was cut short. She leaned against the tree behind her and waited for the other men to find their death.

They stopped. The men. They stopped walking forward and turned as one on her.

She pushed herself off the tree, her arms unfolding from her chest. Her Mark withered like a dying plant and retreated back to her shoulders. Holding up her hands, palms out, she stepped around the tree behind her and retreated a step. “Gentlemen, I’m sure—”

A deep, male voice interrupted her from behind. “Nix. What a pleasant surprise to find you here,” he said in fluid Sakin.

She turned and found a group of men in turquoise and blue uniforms. She closed her eyes and groaned, turning back to the Han’s men. “As you can see, I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment.”

The Ino soldier stepped into her line of sight, his black hair slicked into a tight topknot, his leather armor immaculate. “Men of Han, Ino Nami wishes a word with Nix. We relieve you of your burden.”

The man behind the leader growled low. “No you don’t. She is ours.”

“I was hoping you would say that,” the Ino man said with a cold twist of his lips. He flicked his head.

The rest of the Ino soldiers leapt forward, their swords naked and blurring with movement.

The Han’s men didn’t last long.

Nix watched the scene in confusion. She’d thought the Han worked with Ino. If that was the case, why was Ino attacking Han?

The Ino man grabbed Nix’s arm with a painful grip and marched her forward. “Ino Nami has something special planned for you.”

Nix grimaced as she attempted to keep pace with him on her tiptoes. This wasn’t the escape she’d been looking for.

Skah paused, her enemy lying dead at her feet. The winds had picked back up. She turned, scanning the skies. She and her people should have been safe. The storm had been moving north.

Except that by all appearances, it was circling back around to the south again.

She bit off her curse and focused on finding her people, specifically, Tahatan who carried the horn.

The earth blasted several feet to her left, far enough away that she didn’t stumble from the repercussion, but close enough to be hit by some of the flying debris. Skah continued on.

The
Basilah
had helped divert the cannon fire for a short moment.

The cannons Shankara used scarred the earth with an ease she’d never seen before. The caves the Paha tribes used in storms such as this were too close to the surface. Those who had evacuated in time would be buried in the rubble.

Thankfully, Shankara’s bombs had stopped. The only cannon fire now was from the air battle.

Though, even that seemed to have stopped.

She paused in the wind-blown silence. No more cannons. No more guns. No more sounds of fighting. Just wind and rain and an approaching storm.

Reprieve?

She scanned the area for cave openings, or new openings to the tunnel system below. After several minutes, she found a group of her warriors on the other side of the hill. They were regrouping and retreating to higher ground, their eyes to the sky.

Thank the gods. Skah scanned their faces to see who had survived.

Tahatan towered over them, a dark giant among his people. He saw her and his thick face settled in calm.

Skah joined them and touched his arm.

The group of survivors, eight of them, circled around her.

“Where is Neira,” Mina asked, her voice low and raspy.

“I don’t know.” Skah looked up at Tahatan. “Sound your horn to regroup. Do we know why Shankara’s cannon fire has stopped?”

“We need to retreat, Skah.” Wasula pushed her brown hair out of her face and pointed to the storm threatening to overtake them. A wet leaf flew through the air and clung to her hand. She shook it off. “We’re running out of time.”

“If we retreat to the Paha caves, we will die. Shankara will bury us. And that is if the caves still stand.”

Lootah stopped Skah’s hand as she reached for Tahatan’s horn. “Listen.”

The wind roared, screaming at them to run.

The rain beat at them plastering their clothes to their body.

The temperature dropped, their breath billowing in clouds.

Gooseflesh ran up Skah’s arms. They were out of time. Cannons be damned. Perhaps the reason Shankara was no longer firing on them was because they’d fled the storm.

“The cannon fire has stopped,” Lootah shouted over the rising winds. “For whatever reason, that is good for us. Sound the retreat and our survivors will go to the caves.”

Skah didn’t like acting on assumptions. She couldn’t assume Shankara had fled the storm. She had to assume they would continue to fire on the Paha caves because that was the worst case scenario. “But Shankara—”

“Is a problem someone else has already solved for us!” Lootah tugged on her arm. “Skah, let us be gone from this place!”

Except the Shankara were no longer the worst case scenario. Not really. This storm was picking up in power. It was the greater threat. “Sound the retreat.”

Tahatan straightened to his full height, placing the bone horn to his lips. He blew the signal for retreat into each direction.

Taileh stood on the rise above the Paha caves and watched the bay the Shankara
lethara
stood in. Stood. He quivered and shook from the damage of the foreign looking sky ship.

She couldn’t call it an air ship. It had annihilated four of the smaller, slower sailed ships with ease then followed the last on its slow retreat to the ground as if mocking the captain.

Tokarz, however, was that captain. She didn’t mourn his passing or his possible suffering. The man deserved everything he got and more.

Shankara’s cannons were as out of commission as its
lethara.
Taileh couldn’t even see how the city would survive in this storm. The veil wasn’t dropping. More of the platforms were falling into the ocean.

The
lethara,
it appeared, was losing the battle to survive.

What power had the El’Asim’s sky ship brought that bring down the great Shankara’s formidable missiles?

However, Shankara’s missiles had done considerable damage the to the Paha caves. Just like she’d known they would when she’d fed the Han the information he’d demanded.

Which was the reason Taileh hadn’t taken Neira inside those caves where she could receive medical attention. First, she didn’t want to be surrounded by the Paha, who knew her to be the enemy. Second, well, she didn’t want to be inside of a cave system that had been so drastically destroyed. Even if there were tunnels that stood, she didn’t know if they would collapse again.

The air dropped in temperature.

Taileh stilled. Hail. Burial by cave-in, or bombardment by hail? She had to choose which way she wished to die.

Movement in the bay far below her caught her attention.

A giant explosion erupted around the base of the crippled
lethara.
Debris flew everywhere. Tendrils. Platforms. People.

Taileh couldn’t make out all of the detail, but what she could see was bad. For Shankara. For Ino. For the Han.

She smiled. Good for everyone else, though.