Page 2 of The Cruel Dawn (Vallendor #2)

The faster I run, the louder the cries and roars.

Am I about to meet the ones who made those large shoeprints? Or is something worse waiting for me?

I race through the scraggly desert glen to the mud-bricked walls of a town. The tall date palms on its perimeter are on fire.

I know this city. Gasho, the capital of the kingdom of Ohogar, in the middle of Doom Desert. One of my favorite provinces in Vallendor Realm is now besieged—but by whom?

The scorching winds from the burning city whistle, but they aren’t as loud as the cries of the humans within, which grow shriller the closer I come.

A tiny part of me whispers, “Not my problem.” But my heart is bigger—I can’t pretend that I don’t care, that I can’t help, and that whatever happens in this mud-bricked town will stay in this mud-bricked town.

I snap my cloak, and the air around me swirls with red dust. The dark stone in my amulet barely glows. I’m not strong enough. I’m not blessed enough. But I’m strong and blessed enough to do something. I’m as blessedly strong as I’m gonna be.

A bridge crosses over a dry canal and into a city now lost in smoke.

My mouth is dry and my throat parched. I need water before launching into another fight, but I don’t smell any water.

The way tiny tumbleweeds roll up and down this canal, water hasn’t run here in ages.

My eyes burn from the spinning dust clouds and smoke.

And then the stink of rot and decay hits me and makes me gag.

Down in the gully, a mother holds a child by the hand and clutches a baby to her chest. Together, the three of them clench into a tight ball.

A man holds the gash in his neck. His mouth gapes, and his eyes widen as his end comes.

Children shake the shoulders of unmoving adults; some cry, “Amma, wake up!” and “Papa, I’m scared!

” Fat and hungry corpse flies buzz from body to fallen body.

I skid to a stop and think about jumping into the canal, but I don’t know what I can do to help them. I have to help them!

A woman screams from the rooftop of a house. Somewhere, a bell clangs. Everywhere, people shout, weep, pray.

No!

Run!

Get back!

The iron-studded gates of this town dangle on their hinges like front teeth, like they’ll be knocked out by a good punch.

Where are the city guards who were all here when I last passed through this town?

Amus: he’d been a long-distance runner, I remember. He’d been mean but committed to protecting his town.

Sumerka: too elegant to work as a guard, but he burned with the need to prove to his father that he could handle a sword.

Ilil: she’d had opinions—about weapons, about strategy, about the right amount of pressure to apply on an enemy’s neck to scare them without killing them.

Once upon a time, this gate had thirty guards, each trained in combat techniques by my Mera contingent. Now, though, these gates have been abandoned.

I pull Fury from my scabbard and race past those broken gates that protect nothing.

Everyone I can see is trying to hide beneath rubble from creatures swooping down from the air and snapping at them, tearing through their skin and breaking their bones.

Arrows fly from bows I can’t see, bouncing off the hides of these…these…

Cowslews.

Each creature is as big as a bull, with white skulls for heads and enormous red eyes.

They have wings, but these creatures are not birds of prey.

They’re not even the battabies I faced down in Azzam Cavern.

They have no feathers, but rather brown fur like a bear’s and razor-sharp talons as long as my forearms.

Supreme didn’t create these beasts. They have no symmetry, no sense. The traitor, Danar Rrivae, brought them to Vallendor. And now, the biggest cowslew locks its red eyes with me. “You.” Smoke curls from the beast’s nostrils.

I cock my head. “Yep. Me. ”

The creature roars and charges at me, its teeth bared, its talons glinting.

Right as the cowslew springs at me, I roar, almost scaring myself with just how fierce I sound. I hold up my left hand to protect my head, sending a ball of my otherworldly wind that slams the beast back into a house.

For a moment, silence falls across the city as humans and otherworldly gape at me.

A woman shouts, “Celestial!” just as another cowslew swoops down from the sky and snaps her neck in its beak.

I shout, “No!” and shoot wind at that beast, and at another otherworldly that tries again to bite me.

Not one of these creatures fears me—they sense that I’m not entirely myself.

Their confidence, though, fuels me and steadies my hand, and I hit my marks.

One cowslew after another tumbles from the sky.

I send them slamming into market stands and shops.

If I didn’t have a fuzzy stomach and blurred vision and softening knees, I’d be able to stop even more of these beasts.

Yeah, if I was as healthy as a young Mera warrior after eating a full meal, I’d be able to do this wind-whipping all day.

But there are so many cowslews—and more are coming. Fearless, they’re breaking down the temple doors. They’re dancing atop a temple’s domed rooftop, and those stunning mosaic tiles crack, fall, and shatter against the hard-packed dirt.

Cowslews lift grown men into the air and snap them in two within their beaks.

Cowslews rip at the bellies of women and tear out their bowels.

City-folk who see me run behind me, bloody and broken. They crouch, hoping that my wake will protect them.

But I can’t stay in one place. The cries of children pull me south.

I run toward those kids with this cape of terrorized people lumbering behind me—they’re barely managing to stay alive in this fight. I find those young ones in a dead garden. Their bronze, tear-slicked skin burns the amber of sickness.

“Amma!”

“Papa!”

They scream and scream and scream.

But the creatures attacking them aren’t those red-goggled cowslews. No, these snarling beasts are ground-bound urts with shiny silver scales that run along their spines. Their snouts gleam, bright with blood.

I push wind at the silver-spined creatures and shatter three of the four against those mud-bricked walls.

Urt Number Four snarls at me.

I push it into a dry fountain, then run to meet it, driving Fury into its neck.

Four more urts stand where the previous four stood.

“Too many,” I whisper, my limbs trembling. There are too many otherworldly, and just one of me, and I’m about to throw up and pass out. I know I’m gonna lose this battle.

The silver-spined urts and the red-eyed cowslews see me standing by this fountain, towering over a crowd of cowering humans.

I want to tell these people that it will be okay, but how can it be okay when I’m leaning against Fury’s hilt because my legs aren’t strong and I’m so fucking thirsty and the world goes back to fading at the edges and—

The ground quakes beneath my boots. The sound of the buckling earth echoes over the shrieks of the city-folk. Shouts fill the air. These aren’t howls of fear but the battle cries of the fearless. I hear metal striking flesh and bone. I hear… laughter and shouts of, “Kai!” Others shout, “Fekaa!”

Huge warriors, the men bare-chested, the women wearing black or red bandeaus, race around me as swift as nighttime fog.

Eight of them stop to surround me and the terrified humans in my wake.

But their weapons face inward, aiming at me and not the urts and cowslews that are steadily devouring the mortals of this town.

How am I the threat?

I glance at these warriors’ feet—feet large enough to have made those shoeprints out in the desert.

These warriors are as tall as the city’s mud-bricked houses, and they wear linen and leather sarongs that protect their muscular thighs.

Their tattoos swirl like black-and-red smoke around their torsos, and black-and-red paint adorns their sharp, high cheekbones.

Their irises are ruby-rimmed and filled with hatred.

The warriors not guarding me move from house to garden to town square, looking for urts and cowslews to kill. Blades high, blades wet, blades hot from work.

I smile at a woman warrior and step forward with my hands up. “Hi. You may not remember me, but I’m not—”

The warrior standing behind me presses his blade against my neck and growls, “Dum’s kuqa ur aerr maqar kuqa osoem.” Don’t move or you’ll never move again.

He speaks… Mera ?

Another type of warrior works on the edges of the battle.

They aren’t built for fighting, and their beauty is more of a hush than a holler.

Their smiles are soft, their gray eyes bright and sparkling.

They wear tunics and loose trousers made of linen and light, and they kneel beside dying and injured villagers who are drowning in amber waves of death.

They place their soft hands against the foreheads, broken limbs, and hearts of the injured, and whisper, “Assiph mi seshm sihv fi misisiv.” Accept the light and be healed.

They are speaking Eserimean, the second of my two native tongues.

But why are they here , now, in the thick of the fighting?

A woman cries out.

The blade at my neck disappears.

Two cowslews attack another warrior who is holding me hostage. The circle has broken, and now, my captors are also fighting the otherworldly.

I back away from the fountain, careful not to stumble over my living cape of now-twenty city-folk.

An urt lunges at me from my right.

I sweep it against a wagon and burn another in the sky. I turn to run toward the sound of more fighting, but four flying creatures thump down in front of me, blocking my path. Three land behind me. They all snap their beaks at me, and one cowslew successfully slashes my wrist.

I cry out at the blood spurting out around my hand. Trembling, I stagger back, still shocked. Feels like my arm is on fire and filled with broken glass.

The creature’s beak is now red with my blood, and it lunges at me again.

But a warrior’s dagger slides between the cowslew’s shoulder blades, killing the creature before he aims his blade at me again.

“What the fuck?” I cry, wincing from the fiery pain now sparking from my hand up to my shoulder. “I’m not the enemy, idiot.”

But the ground shakes again. Stones and dirt explode all around us.

Up in the sky, a ball of fire the size of a mountain heads straight for the city.

What the fuck ?

The heat of the meteor warms my face, and even the otherworldly shield their eyes against its brightness.

The ball of fire races closer…closer…

BOOM!