Prologue - Champion Tsiory

Tsiory stared at the incomplete maps laid out on the command tent's only

table. He tried to stand tall, wanting to project an image of strength for the

military leaders with him, but he swayed slightly, a blade of grass in an

imperceptible breeze. He needed rest and was unlikely to get it.

It'd been three days since he'd last gone to the ships to see Taifa. He

didn't want to think he was punishing her. He told himself he had to be

here, where the fighting was thickest. She wanted him to hold the beach and

push into the territory beyond it, and that was what he was doing.

The last of the twenty-five hundred ships had arrived, and every woman,

man, and child who was left of the Chosen was now on this hostile land.

Most of the ships had been scavenged for resources, broken to pieces, so the

Omehi could survive. There would be no retreat. Losing against the savages

would mean the end of his people, and that Tsiory could not permit.

The last few days had been filled with fighting, but his soldiers had

beaten back the natives. More than that, Tsiory had taken the beach, pushed

into the tree line, and marched the bulk of his army deeper into the

peninsula. He couldn't hold the ground he'd taken, but he'd given her time.

He'd done as his queen had asked.

Still, he couldn't pretend he wasn't angry with her. He loved Taifa, the

Goddess knew he did, but she was playing a suicidal game. Capturing the

peninsula with dragons wouldn't mean much if they brought the Cull down

on themselves.

"Champion!" An Indlovu soldier entered the command tent, taking

Tsiory from his thoughts. "Major Ojore is being overrun. He's asking for

reinforcements."

"Tell him to hold." Tsiory knew the young soldier wanted to say more.

He didn't give him the chance. "Tell Major Ojore to hold."

"Yes, Champion!"

Harun spat some of the calla leaf he was always chewing. "He can't

hold," the colonel told Tsiory and the rest of the assembled Guardian

Council. The men were huddled in their makeshift tent beyond the beach.

They were off the hot sands and sheltered by the desiccated trees that

bordered them. "He's out of arrows. It's all that kept the savages off him,

and Goddess knows, the wood in this forsaken land is too brittle to make

more."

Tsiory looked over his shoulder at the barrel-chested colonel. Harun was

standing close enough for him to smell the man's sour breath. Returning his

attention to the hand-drawn maps their scouts had made of the peninsula,

Tsiory shook his head. "There are no reinforcements."

"You're condemning Ojore and his fighters to death."

Tsiory waited, and, as expected, Colonel Dayo Okello chimed in.

"Harun is right. Ojore will fall and our flank will collapse. You need to

speak with the queen. Make her see sense. We're outnumbered and the

savages have gifts we've never encountered before. We can't win."

"We don't need to," Tsiory said. "We just need to give her time."

"How long? How long until we have the dragons?" Tahir asked, pacing.

He didn't look like the man Tsiory remembered from home. Tahir Oni came

from one of the Chosen's wealthiest families and was renowned for his

intelligence and precision. He was a man who took intense pride in his

appearance.

Back on Osonte, every time Tsiory had seen Tahir, the man's head was

freshly shaved, his dark skin oiled to a sheen, and his colonel's uniform

sculpted to his muscular frame. The man before him now was a stranger to

that memory.

Tahir's head was stubbly, his skin dry, and his uniform hung off a wasted

body. Worse, it was difficult for Tsiory to keep his eyes from the stump of

Tahir's right arm, which was bleeding through its bandages.

Tsiory needed to calm these men. He was their leader, their inkokeli, and

they needed to believe in their mission and queen. He caught Tahir's

attention, tried to hold it and speak confidently, but the soldier's eyes

twitched like a prey animal's.

"The savages won't last against dragons," Tsiory said. "We'll break

them. Once we have firm footing, we can defend the whole of the valley

and peninsula indefinitely."

"Your lips to the Goddess's ears, Tsiory," Tahir muttered, without using

either of his honorifics.

"Escaping the Cull," Dayo said, echoing Tsiory's unvoiced thoughts,

"won't mean anything if we all die here. I say we go back to the ships and

find somewhere a little less… occupied."

"What ships, Dayo? There aren't enough for all of us, and we don't have

the resources to travel farther. We're lucky the dragons led us here," Tsiory

said. "It was a gamble, hoping they'd find land before we starved. Even if

we could take to the water again, without them leading us, we'd have no

hope."

Harun waved his arms at their surroundings. "Does this look like hope to

you, Tsiory?"

"You'd rather die on the water?"

"I'd rather not die at all."

Tsiory knew where the conversation would head next, and it would be

close to treason. These were hard men, good men, but the voyage had made

them as brittle as this strange land's wood. He tried to find the words to

calm them, when the shouting outside their tent began.

"What in the Goddess's name—" said Harun, opening the tent's flap and

looking out. He couldn't have seen the hatchet that took his life. It

happened too fast.

Tahir cursed, scrambling back as Harun's severed head fell to the ground

at his feet.

"Swords out!" Tsiory said, drawing his weapon and slicing a cut through

the rear of the tent to avoid the brunt of whatever was out front.

Tsiory was first through the new exit, blinking under the sun's blinding

light, and all around him was chaos. Somehow, impossibly, a massive force

of savages had made their way past the distant front lines, and his lightly

defended command camp was under assault.

He had just enough time to absorb this when a savage, spear in hand,

leapt for him. Tsiory, inkokeli of the Omehi military and champion to

Queen Taifa, slipped to the side of the man's downward thrust and swung

hard for his neck. His blade bit deep and the man fell, his life's blood

spilling onto the white sands.

He turned to his colonels. "Back to the ships!"

It was the only choice. The majority of their soldiers were on the front

lines, far beyond the trees, but the enemy was between Tsiory and his army.

Back on the beach, camped in the shadows of their scavenged ships, there

were fighters and Gifted, held in reserve to protect the Omehi people.

Tsiory, the colonels, the men assigned to the command camp, they had to

get back there if they hoped to survive and repel the ambush.

Tsiory cursed himself for a fool. His colonels had wanted the command

tent pitched inside the tree line, to shelter the leadership from the punishing

sun, and though it didn't feel right, he'd been unable to make any

arguments against the decision. The tree line ended well back from the front

lines, and he'd believed they had enough soldiers to ensure they were

protected. He was wrong.

"Run!" Tsiory shouted, pulling Tahir along.

They made it three steps before their escape was blocked by another

savage. Tahir fumbled for his sword, forgetting for a moment that he'd lost

his fighting hand. He called out for help and reached for his blade with his

left. His fingers hadn't even touched the sword's hilt when the savage cut

him down.

Tsiory lunged at the half-naked aggressor, blade out in front, skewering

the tattooed man who'd killed Tahir. He stepped back from the impaled

savage, seeking to shake him off the sword, but the heathen, blood bubbling

in his mouth, tried to stab him with a dagger made of bone.

Tsiory's bronze-plated leathers turned the blow and he grabbed the

man's wrist, breaking it across his knee. The dagger fell to the sand and

Tsiory crashed his forehead into his opponent's nose, snapping the man's

head back. With his enemy stunned, Tsiory shoved all his weight forward,

forcing the rest of his sword into the man's guts, drawing an open-mouthed

howl from him that spattered Tsiory with blood and phlegm.

He yanked his weapon away, pulling it clear of the dying native, and

swung round to rally his men. He saw Dayo fighting off five savages with

the help of a soldier and ran toward them as more of the enemy emerged

from the trees.

They were outnumbered, badly, and they'd all die if they didn't

disengage. He kept running but couldn't get to his colonel before Dayo took

the point of a long-hafted spear to the side and went down. The closest

soldier killed the native who had dealt the blow, and Tsiory, running full tilt,

slammed into two others, sending them to the ground.

On top of them, he pulled his dagger from his belt and rammed it into

the closest man's eye. The other one, struggling beneath him, reached for a

trapped weapon, but Tsiory shoved his sword hilt against the man's throat,

using his weight to press it down. He heard the bones in the man's neck

crack, and the savage went still.

Tsiory got to his feet and grabbed Dayo, "Go!"

Dayo, bleeding everywhere, went.

"Back to the beach!" Tsiory ordered the soldiers near him. "Back to the

ships!"

Tsiory ran with his men, looking back to see how they'd been undone.

The savages were using gifts to mask themselves in broad daylight. As he

ran, he saw more and more of them stepping out of what his eyes told him

were empty spaces among the trees. The trick had allowed them to move an

attacking force past the front lines and right up to Tsiory's command tent.

Tsiory forced himself to move faster. He had to get to the reserves and

order a defensive posture. His heart hammered in his chest and it wasn't

from running. If the savages had a large enough force, this surprise attack

could kill everyone. They'd still have the front-line army, but the women,

men, and children they were meant to protect would be dead.

Tsiory heard galloping. It was an Ingonyama, riding double with his

Gifted, on one of the few horses put on the ships when they fled Osonte.

The Ingonyama spotted Tsiory and rode for him.

"Champion," the man said, dismounting with his Gifted. "Take the

horse. I will allow the others to escape."

Tsiory mounted, saluted before galloping away, and looked back. The

Gifted, a young woman, little more than a girl, closed her eyes and focused,

and the Ingonyama began to change, slowly at first, but with increasing

speed.

The warrior grew taller. His skin, deep black, darkened further, and,

moving like a million worms writhing beneath his flesh, the man's muscles

re-formed thicker and stronger. The soldier, a Greater Noble of the Omehi,

was already powerful and deadly, but now that his Gifted's powers flowed

through him, he was a colossus.

The Ingonyama let out a spine-chilling howl and launched himself at his

enemies. The savages tried to hold, but there was little any man, no matter

how skilled, could do against an Enraged Ingonyama.

The Ingonyama shattered a man's skull with his sword pommel, and in

the same swing, he split another from collarbone to waist. Grabbing a third

heathen by the arm, he threw him ten strides.

Strain evident on her face, the Gifted did all she could to maintain her

Ingonyama's transformation. "The champion has called a retreat," she

shouted to the Omehi soldiers within earshot. "Get back to the ships!"

The girl—she was too young for Tsiory to think of her as much else—

gritted her teeth, pouring energy into the enraged warrior, struggling as six

more savages descended on him.

The first of the savages staggered back, his chest collapsed inward by

the Ingonyama's fist. The second, third, and fourth leapt on him together,

stabbing at him in concert. Tsiory could see the Gifted staggering with each

blow her Ingonyama took. She held on, though, brave thing, as the target of

her powers fought and killed.

It's enough, thought Tsiory, leave. It's enough.

The Ingonyama didn't. They almost never did. The colossus was

surrounded, swarmed, mobbed, and the savages did so much damage to him

that he had to end his connection to the Gifted or kill her too.

The severing was visible as two flashes of light emanating from the

bodies of both the Ingonyama and the Gifted. It was difficult to watch what

happened next. Unpowered, the Ingonyama's body shrank and his strength

faded. The next blow cut into his flesh and, given time, would have killed

him.

The savages gave it no time. They tore him to pieces and ran for the

Gifted. She pulled a knife from her tunic and slit her own throat before they

could get to her. That didn't dissuade them. They fell on her and stabbed her

repeatedly, hooting as they did.

Tsiory, having seen enough, looked away from the butchery, urging the

horse to run faster. He'd make it to the ships and the reserves of the Chosen

army. The Ingonyama and Gifted had given him that with their lives. It was

hard to think it mattered.

Too many savages had poured out from the tree line. They'd come in

force and the Chosen could not hold. The upcoming battle would be his last