Azul lay in the stillness, panting, shaking, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.The screaming continued outside.She closed her eyes, a headache emerging.
Fuck, I hate these men.She truly wished to drown Somadina in a bucket of his own faeces.
Slowly, she worked at the cords.The soldier's carelessness was her advantage; the knots gave, loosened, slipped, and her hands were free.
She sat up, swaying, the drug still whispering in her blood.The room spun around her, then steadied.
Host.
The snake's voice was calm in her mind.Unafraid, as if it trusted she would survive this ordeal.
"You're still here," she sighed.
I am always here.
Azul's lips settled into a small smile.
"I'm going to feed you well," she said.
Obiageli had fucked up.
She is...nutritious?
"She has the most spiritual energy in this city."Azul stood, finding her balance."She's probably really delicious."Using the pseudonym of 'Viper' was smart and kept her hidden behind Azul and Chidinma, but why did she think she was the only one who could scheme?
If she could write to Orda Naiman, what was stopping her —Azul— from writing to the same man and adjusting her plans?
If not for her darling sister, she wouldn't have considered opening the gates to force Somadina to bring in Orda Naiman's men under the guise of an 'alliance'.If Altansarnai never came, it would be too easy for him to escape.This way, behind the palace walls, he would die by her husband's hand.
I am hungry,it admitted.
Azul moved toward the door, towards the fire, the blood and the chaos of a palace tearing itself apart."Let's go hunting."
Chapter 39
Theforestcampdiedquietly.Orda Naiman's main force had been the largest military assembly the region had seen in a generation.Ten thousand men, their siege engines, their supply lines, their confidence.They had sat outside Borjigin walls for weeks and watched a city starve, and they had felt invincible.
Because they were.
They went to sleep invincible.
They dreamt of their victory.
They did not wake up.
Varok's riders hit the eastern perimeter at the hour before dawn, when the body's defences are lowest and the mind is slowest to separate dream from reality.Five thousand Valthorne cavalry moved in near silence through the tree line, torches unlit, horses' hooves wrapped in cloth—a trick Varok had learned from a campaign so nasty very few of his men had lived to tell the tale.
The first line of sentries died before they could shout.
The second line died before they understood why the first had gone quiet.
By the time the camp understood it was under attack, Varok's riders were already inside the perimeter, and the screaming had begun in earnest.
"Push through the centre!"Varok's voice carried over the chaos, his massive frame visible above the melee, his sword catching torchlight as the camp's fires were kicked alive by panicked men."Don't let them form ranks—don't let them think!"
His horse reared as three soldiers rushed him simultaneously.He cut down two before his mount's hooves dealt with the third, and he was riding again before the bodies settled.
The men were waking in pieces—some men were armed, some half-dressed, and some still stumbling from their bedrolls into slaughter.The siege engines loomed useless in the darkness, enormous and immovable, monuments to a strategy that had just become irrelevant.
