Page 35 of Crown of the Dunes

Of course, I would need her help to get the Heart too.

Hoofbeats next to me drew my attention as Izumi pulled up next to me where I rode at the front of the column of riders. By now, we were only fifty or so yards from the gate. I half expected to be greeted by archers on the city walls, an army of Kelvadan ready to face off against the full force of the clans.

Instead, the city was silent in the dawn hour—almost eerily so. Something about it unsettled me. Sweat pooled inside my gloves.

“Should I have the clans fan out and surround the city? This could be a prolonged siege, given that Kelvadan has had so long to prepare since the last battle,” Izumi asked. Her eyes were appraising as she took in the high walls as if calculating how exactly they could be breached.

I shook my head, breaking free of my sense of foreboding. “No, we’ll be entering through the gates.”

Izumi’s gaze snapped away from the city to me. “The gate may be a recent addition, but I doubt it will be easy to break down.”

“Good thing I don’t plan on breaking it down. It should open relatively easily from the inside.”

Before she could ask any more questions, I signaled to the rider a few horses behind me who had helped me wrap the bone spider in canvas and load it onto Daiti’s back. While the warhorse snorted in warning as I did so, I murmured to him that it would let him see his rider again, and he had seemed to understand.

“Start a fire,” I ordered. “Get the smoke to reach as high as you can and then throw the bone spider on the flames.”

Izumi’s eyes widened in understanding. “You intend to ride the gravehawk again.”

“I will use the desert’s fury to destroy those who defy her will,” I growled. I swung down off Alza’s back, checking that all my weapons were in place: my saber across my back, my dirk in my belt, and a spare knife tucked into my boot.

Alza nudged me in annoyance, as if to ask why I would choose to ride a mount other than her into battle. I shushed her gently with a pat on the nose.

“I’m sure you would do your best to jump the gate into the city, but it might be a little high even for you,” I whispered quietly enough that nobody could hear, before adding more loudly, “Once I open the gate, be prepared to charge inside and meet me there with my mount.”

The riders began to form columns, lining up in the plain before the city.

“What if a gravehawk doesn’t come?” the man who had loaded the bone spider asked. “Forgive me, Lord Viper, but I almost find myself wishing it won’t. I had hoped to never see one again.” He squinted up at the quickly lightening sky.

I cocked my head in curiosity. He looked at me and began to shrink away as I didn’t answer. It reminded me of how disconcerted most people were by the blank stare of the mask—part of the reason I was so surprised by the way he had spoken to me in the first place.

Most of Clan Katal’s riders had avoided me studiously in my years serving Lord Alasdar. But some of the newer riders from other clans spoke to me more easily, almost like I was a comrade, when I had rounded encampment passing out kindling and helping drive back bone spiders. I never knew how to respond.

“What is your name, rider?” I asked quickly, before the man could make the retreat I could see him considering.

“Nabu of Clan Tibel,” he offered.

“Well, Nabu, the legends say that gravehawks are drawn to sites of battle. The death and the blood fuels them, just like they fuel the desert—likely why they were drawn to the burning flesh of the bone spider.” My ears pricked as I paused, a faint sound like distant thunder drifting on the air. I lifted my face to the sky as I spoke. “The desert gives and it takes. The desert is going to give me the gravehawk I need so I can take back what’s hers—and what’s mine.”

As I said the last word, a shadow fell over us. The sharp whinnies of panicked horses rippled through the assembled riders, but I paid them no mind, drawing both my dirk and my knife from my boot; my saber would remain on my back until I was in the city, not wanting to chance losing my best weapon in my attempt to wrangle a terror of the desert.

The snap of wings cracked through the sky right above me, and the horses screamed as the skeletal bird pulled in its wings, diving directly toward the smoldering fire.

Without another word to Nabu, I set off at a run. Its claws extended toward the smoldering corpse, like deadly knives, and I extended my own as I sprinted.

Magic rose within me like a growing torrent of flame.

I was twenty meters from the gravehawk, and the chattering in my head grew to a shout. Then I was ten meters away.

Just before the skeletal bird touched down, I leaped. I squeezed my fists and pulled, letting the strings of my power launch me high into the air, over the flare of the gravehawk’s wings as I jumped at it from behind.

My vision zeroed in at the bony joints at the base of its neck. With a roar, I plunged my blades down, right into the points I remembered.

The moment I landed on its back, a screeching like tearing metal split the air. It bucked wildly, but this time I was ready.

I squeezed my thighs around its bony spine, gritting my teeth as I yanked upward on the blades embedded in its skeletal shoulders. The snap of wings echoed in my ears as it threw them wide once again, pumping them forcefully to take to the sky once more.

The gray stone of the mountains swirled with the rising black smoke of the fire as my mount wheeled around, trying to throw me off. The muscles of my left shoulder burned and began to shake as I pulled hard on the knife on that side, trying to direct the creature toward the city walls.