Page 90 of The Merciless Ones
We exit to find Katya and Nimita standing in the hallway, tense. Footsteps are marching up the stairs, commands sounding. There are more jatu out there. Hundreds more, if their voices are any indication.
“Deka!” Katya breathes out, relieved to see me. “We’re surrounded! We barred the hallway downstairs, but—”
The telltale thump of a battering ram completes her sentence.
As I groan, annoyed, a scaly head butts against my fingers. When I look down, Ixa, still in his massive true form, is staring at me with intense focus. Me… he says simply.
I frown. You? I ask, confused, but Ixa doesn’t reply.
Instead, he pads over to the edge of the hallway and begins grunting. I stare, perplexed, until I see muscles rippling into existence and spikes popping down his spine and across his forehead. He’s transforming again, but something’s different this time. He’s not shifting into a new creature; it’s just that his body is growing – getting bigger and bigger. It’s almost as if he’s moving further into adolescence, his features becoming more chiselled and defined, his legs and chest so massive now, they butt into the wall.
When there isn’t enough room to grow that way, his hindquarters begin to stretch out, moving towards us.
I push the others behind me, alarmed. “Everyone press to the walls!”
Ixa, you should stop now, I add silently, but he keeps growing and growing. “Ixa?” I call out, panicked.
He whines softly but doesn’t reply. It’s as if he can no longer control it, this rapid growth, only there’s not enough space for him to grow into. The walls around us are made of n’gor, the hardest rock in Otera. It’ll take us hours to break through it, and by then…
“Ixa,” I whisper, horrified. “Ixa, you have to stop now, you have to—”
“I’ve got this.” Britta gently deposits Li on the ground, then walks towards the wall.
She presses her palm there, concentrates. Within moments, my veins are tingling as her power surges to the fore once more, only, unlike before, it’s calm – controlled. Britta inhales once, exhales, then pushes. The wall explodes outwards.
Ixa shoots straight through it, his size reaching, then swiftly outpacing, that of a mammut, one of those colossal, spiky grey creatures. Only when long, feathery wings unfurl from his shoulders does his growth finally slow, then stop.
The early afternoon air gusts up as he looks back at us, pleased but tired. He has completely transitioned and looks even more like a sea drakos now, a crown of spikes jutting proudly from his forehead and down his spine, each leg large enough to dwarf a horse, claws the size of hammers. I always knew Ixa would get big one day, but he’s a mountain of a beast now.
Ride, Deka? he asks eagerly. Ride Ixa?
I nod, whirling to the others. “Get on – hurry!”
My friends quickly mount, and then Ixa launches into the air. One flap of his wings, and we’re already soaring over the Grand Temple, leaving that hateful place and all its horrors behind. The jatu below glare up at us, shake their weapons, but we ignore them: it’s on to our final destination: Abeya. But first, we have to make a quick stop.
The other carts have already made it to the alaki army’s encampment when we swoop down, Ixa swiftly shrinking back to his former bull-like size. As we expected, the n’goma didn’t even touch us when we flew out – the kaduth prevented us from burning, just as it did everyone else who used it. We’re surrounded in seconds, the alaki at the camp all on the alert, given the furious battles they must have engaged in the night before. Fires still burn on the walls, accompanied by the faraway shouts of the jatu trying to put out the blaze. Hemaira saw its share of bloodshed last night, but those walls, as always, remain standing.
“Honoured Nuru.” The words ripple through the camp, spreading past the alaki army to the crowds of women, children, and even the few men and yandau who huddle behind them, all of them trying to recover from their rushed escape from the city.
As I nod in greeting to all the people now respectfully genuflecting before me, a familiar dark, lithely muscled form pushes her way over. “Deka, Keita, are you all right?” Asha asks, Mehrut, Gazal and Jeneba all behind her.
There’s no sign of Melanis, not that I expected there to be. By now, the winged Firstborn will be long gone, back to report every detail of my supposed betrayal to the mothers, even though, I’m assuming, they already saw everything through her eyes.
I nod wearily. “I’m only stopping to deliver a message. The armies of Idugu are attacking Abeya. We need every able-bodied and willing person in the camp to return to the mountain.”
“I’m coming with you,” she says immediately.
I nod, gesture tiredly at the others, who are all slumped beside Ixa, exhausted. “You should go to your sister. Lamin just woke up from the gilded sleep. All the uruni did.”
“What?” Asha gasps.
As she hurries over to her sister, Mehrut behind her, the crowd suddenly parts, revealing a stern Firstborn I quickly recognize as General Bussaba, the commander of the siege against Hemaira’s walls. I fought alongside her multiple times in those first few months after I was assigned to the wall. She’s a tall, dignified woman from the Eastern provinces, with light brown skin and flowing black hair that trails from the top of her helmet in a long braid. The rapid-fire blinks and twitches that dominate her manner take nothing away from her authority, and neither do her pleasant moon-shaped face and large dimples.
She genuflects jerkily in front of me, her eyes widening slightly when they take stock of my dishevelled state. “Honoured Nuru, it seems you have undergone quite the ordeal. May I offer you food and rest?” Her head jerks twice after she speaks.
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I stopped only to deliver a warning: the armies of the Idugu are headed towards Abeya, if they’re not there already. Elder Kadiri told me two days, but I’m not sure of the truth of his words. Take every willing person you can find. We must defend our home.”
The general absorbs this with the same calm efficiency she does everything else. “And what of the siege?”