Glenda Larke - Stormlord rising

Ryka loosened her clothing and gave Khedrim the breast to quiet him, even as she looked for Anina. To her shock, the woman was lying as still as death in the oil. A pointed shard of pottery jutted from her breast. Her eyes stared sightlessly upward, an expression of surprise on her face.

Ryka cursed, long and hard. The woman could have been safe, hiding with the other slaves, but she had come back to help.

Oblivious, Khedrim sucked hungrily until, sated, he fell asleep again. There was nothing she could do for Anina, so she walked away with him in her arms into the main cavern. The Reduners-at least those who were alive and relatively unhurt-were all gone. Injured warriors were sprawled on the floor, some unconscious, some with broken limbs, along with many bodies. There was nothing left of the zigger cages, or the ziggers.

Outside, after some sort of lull, the battle had been rejoined. Keeping close to the cavern wall, she peered out. A glance told her it would not be easy to sneak away. The fighting surged immediately outside the cavern, with the Scarpen forces pressing the Reduners closely. If she did venture out, she would be in danger of being trampled by a pede or cut by a stray antenna, not to mention killed by someone from the Scarpen forces. Her oil-saturated clothing was a traveling tunic of Laisa's, but it had long since been stained red by the sands of the quarter. Her skin and her blond hair were red. The middle of a battle was not the place to start arguing your allegiance.

Damn, she thought. Wearily she slid down the wall into a sitting position. She ached everywhere, uncomfortably aware she was still bleeding from the birth and that her exhaustion was worse after using her water-powers.

Jasper, you had better win this battle because I don't want Ravard to come for me…

And where the blighted hells was Kaneth? Please let him be all right. It was every man for himself. Ordinarily the Reduners would have made short work of an army of shopkeepers, bab pickers and resin collectors, but Davim's men were no longer the proud, undefeated marauders they had been a day or two before. The Scarpermen and their allies smelled victory and fought with a tenacious spirit. Jasper, far from being safe at the far side of the flat ground, found himself imperilled by the ferocity of the fighting around him.

Sandblast them, he thought, they are out to kill the stormlord. He had taken advantage of the lull during the parley to eat as much as he could force down his throat. He could manipulate water again, but he suspected his renewed power would not last long.

He stood up on the back of his pede and tried to keep himself above the worst of the fighting. He plucked water from the cistern and threw it at those who came at him, leaving their destruction to the guards around him. Laisa, next to him and still giving the appearance of being coolly unruffled, blinded Reduners by sucking the water from their eyes.

Aghast, he saw Dibble fall, and then another of his personal guard, and another. His pede, driverless, reared in anger when a Reduner thrust a spear between its segments. Jasper tumbled and sat down hard on the saddle. He saved himself from a further fall to the ground by grabbing for the mounting handle. Someone cut the man down from behind, and the spear was dislodged.

A Reduner driver on pedeback, tall and well-muscled and young, fought his way toward him. The man wielded both spear and scimitar and wreaked havoc among the bladesmen and pedemen tasked with keeping Jasper safe. The ordeal inside the cavern had not cowed this warrior. His robe was wet. His face was bruised and bleeding. His nose was broken. Yet he manipulated his steed with a finesse not many could achieve in normal circumstances. He alternated between scimitar and spear, slashing and stabbing with grim intent. When he wasn't using the scimitar, he held it in his mouth, blunt side inward. When he wasn't jabbing with the spear, he used it as a stave to ward off attack. Both weapons were red with blood; men died under the feet of his mount. He was terrifying.

They had not crossed weapons, though Jasper had first glimpsed him earlier through the shambles of battle. Now he was close.

Jasper threw water at him. The warrior appeared to sense it coming. He ducked and the water splashed harmless across his shoulder. When Laisa turned her attention to him, he spoke to his pede and a feeler whipped through the air in her direction. She saw it coming and threw herself sideways. The serrated edges of the feeler tore through her clothing and she fell to the ground.

The Reduner reared his pede, throwing himself forward until his face was cheek down on the beast's head. He yanked hard on one of the reins and yelled something to his mount. The animal pivoted on its back feet, and as it turned, its feelers swung out in a wide slashing arc, ripping at everything within range. Men fell, Scarpermen, Gibbermen and Reduner alike; pedes scattered.

Jasper and the man were left alone in the center of a cleared space.

I'm going to die, Jasper thought. Unless I think of something quick. He raised his scimitar into a defensive position and drew as much water as he could from the cistern with what remained of his power. I'll throw the lot at him, knock him from his pede…

The response was sluggish. He felt as if he was hauling a recalcitrant pede, not water. He panicked. He was tired, so tired. No, this is more than that. What the salted wells is he doing? And then realization: He's a reeve. He's fighting me with water skills. The man couldn't move water, but he could resist it.

When the pede whipped its feeler around at Jasper, fear clogged his thoughts. He jerked back, thinking he was going to be sliced open, but the animal stopped short of hitting him, and gently touched his face with the tip. Only then did Jasper notice the feeler on the other side was broken. He looked into the animal's myopic eyes. It was stroking him, a pedeic sign of welcome to a friend.

Jasper jerked his head up to look at the rider and was overwhelmed with a sense of recognition. It wasn't Mica's face he recognized, but his water. The features were those of a hardened Reduner marauder: sharpchiseled, calculating, stained red-that man he did not know. But the inner self? That was Mica; that hadn't changed.

And he was swinging his scimitar in a sideways slash that was about to remove Jasper's head from his shoulders.

Worst of all was the recognition in those cold, dark eyes. Mica Flint knew exactly who he was going to kill.

Scarpen Quarter Warthago Range The battle swirled back and forth. Attack, retreat. Retreat, attack. Slash, parry. Parry, slash. Reduner killed. Alabaster triumphant. Scarperman killed. Reduner victorious. A patterned chaos; a chaos with patterns of life and death. Deadly, desperate and bloody. Always bloody.

And always ugly.

The ugliness of the smell. The stink of voided bowels, of urine, of vomit, of guts spilled and trampled. Pede shit, pede piss. The sweet, strong stench of human blood. The ugliness of the noise of battle. The grating scream that wouldn't stop. The harsh sobbing of human beings in pain. The bubbling gasps of men without lungs trying to breathe, the animal grunting of men without guts trying to go on living, the whistling breath of men with pierced windpipes. The guttural horror of the death rattle, that awful final sound of air expelled, never to be replaced. Each sound distinct, whether soft or loud, and each layered in its own special abomination.

And now, for Jasper, another ugliness. His brother was going to kill him. Mica. Mica who had loved him. Worried about him. How could it ever have come to this?

It was the pede that saved him, Mica's pede. It brought a feeler down hard across Mica's arm and the stroke went astray.