The day the horses came to her town, Bola could think of nothing else.
She stood in the shade of the acacia tree while her little brothers clutched at her legs and pointed. Lord Kami rode at the head of the procession of nobles, standing high in the stirrups of his own horse. Three thousand years old, they said of his beast. Kami’s agbada flapped in the wind as he rode, and though his war-mask hid his expression behind the leering face of a jackal, Bola could tell he was grinning.
Kami’s warriors pulled the horses behind them on heavy wheeled platforms. Each beast shone a different colour from the last—some ochre, some turquoise, some emerald green. But one thing they had in common was their eyes. These gleamed red as the setting sun.
When Lord Kami reached the town gates, he stopped before the murmuring crowd. Bola pushed her way through the elders, heedless of the tuts of annoyance at her back, until she stood at the very front.
The whirr and hum of the horses’ bodies filled her ears like distant music. They stood still as statues, the sun reflecting off the angular plates of their bodies. But between those plates, silver veins pulsed, and glowing filaments cast a thousand colours into the air. Tiny lights flickered, now gold, now silver, now blinding white. They said the crystal body of a horse could weigh as much as fifty strong souls, and looking at them then, Bola could well believe it.
“Nine horses!” Lord Kami cried, addressing his crowd. “Nine horses liberated from the claws of the feverborn. Tomorrow, I shall hold a contest of choosing. But tonight, we feast!”
At dusk, Lord Kami’s servants built a towering fire, while drummers set up on a makeshift stage, and every soul in town—from Lord Kami’s noble sisters, to the beggars who slept in the dry creek—came out.
Bola watched them hoist up the bodies of the feverborn Lord Kami had slain in battle. Their metal limbs dangled at odd angles as Kami’s servants bound them to stakes. No light remained in their crystal eyes. There would be no more raids for them. Bola inched closer, trying to imagine herself facing an army of such monsters. Their silver faces seemed almost human, but the blue ichor drying on them was anything but.
Food came from the greathouse itself, brought down on golden platters by servants in white and blue. Bola sat with her back to the acacia, eating plantain and staring out into the darkness. There, black against the richness of the night sky, stood the horses. Even now, their eyes glowed red, like strange stars.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” little Ngabo asked, cartwheeling over to her, his round cheeks sticky with oil.
The rest of their family was down by the fire, drinking ogogoro or joining Lord Kami in his dance of thanks to the ancestors.
“Don’t feel like it,” Bola said.
Ngabo followed her gaze. “You think a horse will answer to you?”
“Lord Kami said anyone could try.”
Ngabo laughed and capered away, and Bola spent the rest of that night alone with her dark thoughts. Horses carried only highbloods[RT1] —every child knew that. And yet Bola could not stop wondering what it would feel like to ride one across the plains herself. To charge into battle on the back of a creature so ancient, and cut down every feverborn who crossed her path.
Come morning, the contest began. Bola heard the drummers as she climbed the hill to the borehole.
“Five buckets!” Old Mama snapped at her from her rocking chair outside their hut. “And don’t be lazing around under that tree!”
“Yes, Mama,” Bola said.
She’d never made the journey there and back so fast. Each time she descended the hill, bucket balanced on her head, water slopping her shoulders, she saw highbloods in bright ceremonial dress, each lining up for a turn. Come high sun, Bola had finished her chores, and the contest was well underway.
“Mama, may I go and climb the acacia tree?” she said in her most charming voice. She made sure to bow all the way to the floor as she said it, but when she straightened, Old Mama squinted in suspicion.
“Climbing trees, is it? Aren’t you a bit old for that? Sure it’s not horses you want to climb?”
“I only want to watch,” Bola said.
“Ah-ah!” Old Mama snapped. “Child! Techwork is not for us-o. Only the highbloods. The minds of the working folk are not strong enough to command it.”
“They would be, if we knew the words,” Bola said, but she said it softly, and Old Mama did not try to stop her when she left.
The crowds were so thick when Bola arrived that she could only see the crystal tops of the horses’ heads. Nobles from all across Jebba had come. Northerners in their veils and kohl. Easterners with their ringed necks. Even some light-skinned outlanders. By turns, they bowed to Lord Kami, then approached the sandy space around the nine horses.
Each time, the crowd stilled. Anticipation rose in the air, like heat from the baked ground. Some brought offerings, which they placed at the feet of the horse they sought. Others performed dances, or displayed their skills with blade or spear. One outlander with white skin painted a ceremonial blue slit his arm from elbow to wrist, and let the blood fall upon the crystal body of the sapphire horse. But each time, the creatures remained immobile.
Then Lord Kami’s junior sister Agana came. Her braided hair shone with jewels and beads. She strode forward with her head high and shoulders back, and when she bowed to the horse she desired, the ruby, the crowd murmured with approval.
Then she began a chant. Not in the Royal Tongue of the king of the Nine Lands. Nor in any of the local tongues. Agana spoke in a lilting, musical language. Bola had heard it before. It was the secret tongue of the ancestors. And none but highbloods might speak it.
Bola watched, her lips moving. The words did not sound so very hard to say. Under her breath, she repeated each sound, trying to feel the fullness of it on her tongue. As Agana spoke, her chant progressed into a song, and the ruby horse lifted its head.
Every soul around Bola cried out at this, but still others hissed for quiet. The horse had moved, but had not yet accepted Agana as rider.
Slowly, cautiously, Agana held out one arm. Then the other. Then she reached forward and touched the horse’s long nose.
The beast whickered—a metallic, throaty sound from deep within its body.
The crowd cheered.
Agana leapt, clasping the horse about its neck and pulling herself onto its back. Her face shone with pride and triumph. The horse shook its head, face to the sun, and then it charged off towards the open plains.
Lord Kami leapt to his feet, laughing uproariously as the crowd scattered out of the horse’s path. He turned with the rest to watch his sister streak across the grasslands on the back of the ancient beast.
After that, they were claimed quickly. Two went to more of Lord Kami’s household, and one to the captain of his quartet. Two more went to the northerners, and one to a white-skinned outlander with hair the colour of sand.
The eighth horse stirred when a warrior with the straight hair and high cheekbones of the south performed his sacred dance, but when he reached out to claim the beast, it reared and then charged at the crowd, trampling one man beneath its crystal hooves before plunging eastward without pause.
“That beast has forgotten its sacred pact to bear riders,” Lord Kami declared, as the herb-woman and her apprentices carried off the injured man.
That left only one horse. An ochre. In the dying sunlight, its crystal hide shone like pure gold. It was smaller than the others and, Bola thought, seemed younger, if young could ever be said about such ancient creatures. Many fine, brave souls presented themselves to it, even Lord Kami himself once the ogogoro began to flow.
“That horse has lost its mind,” Agana said, from where she sat at the feet of her ruby, eating from a banana leaf platter. “Perhaps it is dead!”
There was laughter at this, but Lord Kami circled the horse and said, “No. I can hear its muscles. It is alive. It simply does not deem us worthy.”
As the night wore on, the highbloods resumed their dancing and the ochre horse stood alone. Perhaps they were not worthy, but she was not like them. And even when Ngabo tried to fetch her home for pounded yam, she could not look away. After a time, she felt certain the creature was staring back, and found herself imagining what it saw. A lowblood girl, destined for a life of chores and family. Certainly no warrior or leader of armies. Yet its eyes seemed to shine just for her. Goading her. Challenging her to stand.
Bola approached cautiously, pausing often to look left and right, to make sure that no one watched. As she drew closer, she realised she had been wrong to think the beast small. It stood taller than her father. Even there, she felt the heat of its body, like the great forge behind the smithy’s hut. A low, rhythmic thrum sounded deep within it. Roooo-ro, roooo-ro, roooo-ro, like a soldier swinging a flail.
“Oh mighty horse,” Bola said, holding her hands out as she approached. “I have watched you since you came here. Might you accept a simple washer-worker as your rider?”
Belatedly, she bowed. The horse stood unmoving, its body thrumming softly.
“Oh ancient horse!” Bola said. “You who have seen the aeons pass–”
“My sister was right, you know,” a voice said behind her. “That creature’s mind is gone.”
Bola gasped, then turned to see Lord Kami sauntering towards her. He had pulled his war mask up onto the top of his head. The eyes beneath regarded her with mirth.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Bola,” she said. “Bola from the washer-worker family.”
Lord Kami chuckled. “Horses do not carry lowbloods upon their backs. They answer only to those who speak the ancestors’ tongue.”
“Maybe this one is different,” Bola said, lifting her chin defiantly.
Lord Kami grinned. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen. Old enough to ride a horse.”
“Fourteen…” Lord Kami said, shaking his head wistfully. “At your age, you should be learning your numbers, and fumbling in the shadows with whomever catches your eye. Not chasing after horses. Techwork is dangerous, you know.”
“I know. Old Mama taught us.”
“Then stay away from it.”
Bola watched Lord Kami stride away, feeling both anger and sadness. He had spoken as though to warn her, but something in the tightness of his lips made her think she had irked him with her presumption.
It was all the encouragement she needed.
•••
The weeks grew hot and dry, and then the rains came, and with them, the departure of Lord Kami’s guests. As the creek swelled and burst its banks, the ochre horse remained, unmoving. The grass grew high around its legs. Coucals climbed onto its back, and it did not shake them off.
When the dry season came again, and with it Bola’s first blood, children had taken to throwing stones at the horse. Old Mama scolded them and said the ancestors turned from those who mocked the Old Ones, but that did not stop Ngabo and his friends. Bola did not try to stop them either, but at night, she wove long garlands of violets and took them down to the ochre horse, to set about its neck.
“They laugh at you,” she said as she stroked its warm crystal hooves. “But I know how great you are. They don’t mean any harm. They just don’t understand you.”
The following summer, Bola met a boy from Lord Kami’s stables, a high- blood in training with the farriers’ guild.
“When the rains come, I’m going to the city of Maadu,” he said. “I’m going to learn the ancestors’ tongue, and all the secrets of the Old Ones.”
He stroked her shoulder as they lay naked under the shadow of the acacia tree. “When I come back,” he said, “I’ll command that horse to take you as its rider, and then you can live with me in the greathouse.”
“I don’t want you to command it,” she said, and turned away.
The next morning, when she saw the boy whispering to the horse, she felt her stomach twist. He could return with all the knowledge of the ancestors at his command. He could return and take her ochre horse away. He, who had done nothing to honour the creature. He, who had not earned it at all.
•••
Bola was twenty-two when her firstborn, Echu, came into the world. The day after he arrived, Bola strapped him to her back and took him down to meet her ochre.
“Shouldn’t you rest?” asked Matani, her beloved. Steadfast, dependable Matani. He and both their families had been celebrating the birth all night. They sat around the fire, the remains of their feast feeding the lizards. Everyone was there, but Bola had never felt more alone.
“I’m not tired,” she said, patting his shoulder. “And the walk is good for the baby.”
“Then I’ll come with you,” he said, lifting to his feet.
“No! No, you stay. I won’t be long.”
Echu was still asleep when they reached the place where the ochre horse stood. The years had not faded the gleam of its crystal hide. The rains had not dulled the glow of its eyes.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Bola asked her sleeping newborn. “Sunlight and warmth are all it needs. Imagine a creature so pure, not even food is needed to sustain it.”
She pressed her ear against the horse’s flank, just as she had done countless times over the years. The warmth that spread through her cheek, the gentle, ceaseless roooo-ro of its innards, were more comforting to her anything in the world.
•••
Echu was five when monks from the east came through their town. At their backs marched warriors and invokers from all over the Nine Lands, off to defend the north from the feverborn. But five of the holy ones came down to the ochre horse at sunset. They surrounded it with curious offerings—techwork, Bola realised as she watched from the shadows; gleaming boxes of silver, shards of black glass, and strange, bristling filaments. They donned their ceremonial masks, burned their sacred incense and danced from dusk until the sun crept over the horizon. But still the ochre horse did not move.
The day the invoker army left, Bola told Matani she needed to see the herb woman, and then came to the ochre horse at sunset. There she found a strange little man in robes of shattered metal dancing around the horse and laughing. He saw her approach and beckoned her over.
“I’ve seen you visit this horse,” he said in his singsong accent. “You think you can ride it?”
“Only highbloods may command techwork,” Bola said. “I’m just a washer-worker.” She smiled against the tightness in her throat as she spoke, and tried to ignore the stinging in her eyes.
“So why do you visit at all?” The man chuckled, his painted lips spreading wide. “Do you want to know a secret?”
Bola folded her arms and tried to look nonchalant. “Perhaps.”
“You’ve got to guess its name. That’s the trick. Call the horse by its name. Then it is yours to command.”
“And how am I supposed to know its name?” Bola asked, before she could stop herself.
“Listen, and watch. The ancestors will show you.”
Then he returned to his little ritual. Bola watched him for a time, hoping he would leave, wondering who he was. As he hummed and chanted, she thought she heard that same strange language Agana had used, the language of the ancestors. And though she listened to him all night, the words slid from her mind like sand between her fingers.
When she crept back into her hut at dawn, Matani did not ask her where she’d been. He never did; not any more. But the coldness in his eyes told her all she needed to hear.
•••
The rains came and went. Echu grew, as did his two sisters. Echu’s infant brother caught a fever in his first month of life, and soon returned to the ancestors. After that, Bola found herself spending more and more time at the feet of her ochre horse.
“Leke?” she said, hot tears streaking down her cheeks. “Is that your name? It’s what I named him.”
But the horse did not move.
Then one morning, just after dawn, Matani shook her awake. His face, so familiar to her, was lined now. As was her own. She could hear Echu outside, singing in his deep voice, while his daughter tried to join him in the sacred song.
“I thought you’d want to see,” Matani said. “Old Lord Kami is leaving.”
Bola followed Matani through the town, where households were slowly uncoiling from sleep, then past the wall and out onto the plains. There, beyond the stone expanse of the greathouse, a line of warriors headed steadily north. Lord Kami, stooped and white-haired now, rode at the head of the line.
“What’s happening?” Bola said to the young man on her left.
“Lord Kami has been called to war,” he said. “The king says all invokers must go to defend the border from the feverborn.”
“Are they growing stronger, then?” Bola asked.
The young man frowned, glancing at Matani.
“She doesn’t know?” Matani shrugged his great shoulders apologetically. “She doesn’t care for singers and their news.”
Rekeke, the old woman who ran the ogogoro inn, became their leader. Only servants remained within the greathouse. After two years, even the servants departed. Nobody visited the greathouse then, and the grasses and flowers took up residence within its walls. Bola had seen sixty dry seasons now, but still remained strong enough to bring the water down each morning. And on one particular day, just before the start of the rains, as she descended the hill with her bucket, she heard distant shouts, and saw a number of figures streaking across the grasses just beyond the town wall.
By the time she’d deposited her bucket and hurried through town, it was over. She came out through the crumbling walls to see a circle of people gathered around a twisted body. Rekeke stood leaning on her stick, her wrinkled face grim, and as the crowd parted, Bola felt her pulse quicken. A feverborn. A thing of metal and flesh. In the shape of man, but somehow not human at all. Scratches crisscrossed its silver skin. The veins that spilled from its shattered chest still sparked with crackling lights. Matani tried to pull her back, but Bola shook him off angrily. She had no fear of techwork; not as a child and certainly not now.
“There will be more!” Rekeke said that night as they sat around her fire. “Lord Kami was due back years ago. His greathouse lies in ruin. It is time we face the truth. He has fled, or died in the war. And we are unprotected. The singers who come out of the north say all the towns there are empty. It is five days to the city of Maadu. They have high walls. Thousands of warriors. A dozen noble invokers to call the ancestors down to protect the people. It is time we took our things and left.”
“We cannot travel during the rains!” someone called from the back, and there were murmurs of agreement.
“If we do not go now,” Rekeke said. “We may not survive the rains.”
That was when their town divided. Rekeke and many others packed up their homes and families and left. Three hundred souls in total. Bola watched them from the hill, as the rains plastered her iro to her skin and ran in great washes over the ground. She watched them snaking off south, their whole lives on their backs, until they faded from view.
Rekeke had been right. Another feverborn did come. And then another. Then four, hunting for metal as a pack, and Echu was one of the brave souls wounded when the youngsters mustered to protect the town.
That night, he called all the family around him.
“It is foolish to leave during the rains,” Echu said. “But Rekeke was right. We must go. I cannot walk on this leg, but come the first days of the dry season, we must head to Maadu. All of us.” He fixed Bola with his stare as he said that, and they all agreed.
But that night Bola slipped away in the darkness to sit at the ochre horse’s feet. It was as overgrown as Lord Kami’s greathouse now. Flowers twined around its legs. A nest of tiny birds lived on its back. Bola snatched off one of the garlands she had placed upon it. Her old hands crumpled the dried petals as she tried to find the words.
“Feverborn,” Bola said. “That’s your name, isn’t it? You’re not a horse, you’re a monster, come to destroy us all. Come to destroy me.”
And still the ochre did not move.
And when the last of the rains had fallen, and the last of the townsfolk had gathered their things, Bola found herself slipping away while they mapped their route and loaded the cart. She had only meant to say goodbye, but as she sat at the hooves of her ochre horse, she could not make herself stand.
It was near high sun when she heard a heavy sigh behind her.
“If I didn’t come for you,” Matani said, “would you even have joined us?”
She looked up and saw him watching her sadly.
“If you love me…love your children, your grandchildren, you will come,” Matani said. “Now.”
Bola looked away, could not meet his eyes. “I can’t leave it,” she said, her voice scarcely a whisper.
Matani nodded, as though he’d expected those words. “Of course. Because your love for this…thing is greater than your love for your family.”
He stalked away, and Bola wanted to call out to him, wanted to bring him back, but she couldn’t. Because a small part of her feared he was right. Eventually, it was Echu who came and pulled her to her feet. She did not fight him as he steered her away. She took her place on the back of the last cart, so they would not see her tears, and watched her home slide slowly into the distance. How small it looked. How damaged. She thought she could even see the techwork horse, a bright golden speck against the brown of the grasses.
After an hour, they stopped so the children could empty their bladders and their guides could check the maps. Bola thought of her family shrine, back in their hut, abandoned now. She slipped from the cart to stretch her legs. There was a hill behind them. If she climbed it, she might yet be able to see the town. If she just walked back a little further…
•••
Old Mama had been right; if you were quiet, if you were still, you could almost hear the whispers of the ancestors. Six days now, Bola had been sitting at the ruins of her family shrine. Six days, and her only food the rotting scraps she had found in her neighbours’ huts. And yet as she sat, sharing what little she had with the shrine, she became certain that the ancestors were near. Always just out of sight, always just beyond hearing, but close.
Sometimes she thought Old Mama was calling to her, from far away. Once, she was sure she could hear Leke crying.
In the high grasses, her ochre horse stood still and silent. She could make a camp beside it. Perhaps build a hut around it, move the shrine there. But she was too tired to begin.
On the ninth day, a great storm came rolling out of the north to pound the land. Bola sat huddled in her family’s crumbling hut, wrapped tight in a blanket, waiting for the onslaught to end. But even when the rain ceased and the wind had exhausted itself, she could hear strange sounds without, and when she knelt to peer through the window at the road outside, she saw figures. Dozens of them, picking quietly through the abandoned town. At first, she took them for bandits, but then one turned her way and she saw they were not people at all, but feverborn.
Bola clamped a hand to her mouth, her heart pounding. The feverborn continued to stalk through the town, searching each building. A shadow fell across the entrance to her hut. Bola scrambled out through a back window, sure they would give chase. But as she stumbled from hut to hut, keeping low, she heard no sounds of pursuit.
At the edge of town, she saw that a group of them had set up a camp, with the ochre horse at its edge. They had got a fire burning, though its flame was an unnatural green, and they sat in a wide circle, chittering in their unfathomable language.
Bola crouched behind the remains of the town wall, watching. As dusk approached, the other feverborn returned, some carrying pans and tools and cloth they had found in her neighbours’ homes. They did not eat, nor did they dance and sing as the sun set. But several became interested in the techwork horse. One climbed onto its back, to the coarse merriment of the onlookers. Another pushed at the horse’s face. A third sharpened his sword on the ochre’s legs, and still another poked at its eyes, as though searching for signs of life.
Bola felt each movement they made like a cut on her skin. She knew she should run, but she could not make herself move. Something she had long tried to ignore was unravelling within her, slowly coming to life.
Finally, when three of them stood and pushed the ochre horse until it crashed sideways onto the grass, Bola could take no more. She rose from her hiding place and strode forward, no longer feeling fear.
“You!” she shouted, much as she might call to one of her grandchildren. “Get away from her! She’s mine!”
The feverborn were so surprised that they merely peered at her with their glowing eyes. Then one stood at the back—a female, from her look—and swept her cloak over one shoulder, letting her hood fall back. Her ghastly metal face leered in a mockery of humanity. She wore a motley of armour in a dozen different northern styles. A great iwisa club swung from her back, something an invoker lord might have borne. She grinned at Bola with pointed teeth.
“What did you say, old human?”
Bola decided this must be their captain. She spoke in perfect Royal Tongue. Bola had heard that feverborn could sometimes speak human languages, but had never imagined that they would sound so… human when they did.
“I said leave her alone,” Bola said, switching to the same language. “She is mine.”
They all laughed again, a curious rattling sound, and looked to their captain for response. But Bola was not interested in the captain. Behind, through the long grass, Bola could just make out her horse’s face. Its eyes were bright. The crystal edges of its flank shifted in a kaleidoscope of awakening colour. Bola took a step forward. Surely it did not mean to answer to them. Surely these were not the ones for whom it had been waiting.
“Yours?” the captain said. “A horse such as this does not belong to anyone. You cannot impress one so rare with dances and gifts. It might carry a king or a general, for a time. But what can a crone like you hope to offer?”
Bola felt her throat tighten. “Myself,” Bola said. “I offer only myself.”
“Fine. If she has accepted you, then call her to your side.”
Bola looked at her ochre horse, and the horse looked back.
“Well? Call her to your side, or let us carve her up for parts.” The captain drew a small dagger from her belt. “This is one of the oldest horses I have ever seen.” She traced the blade along the ochre’s back until she found a nook. Bola’s heart thumped in her ears as the captain worked the point beneath the ochre’s crystal skin. “We can make good use of what lies within it.”
“Don’t touch her!” Bola said, her gnarled hands balling into fists.
“Why?” the captain asked. She watched Bola closely as she slid the blade back and forth. “She feels no pain. Pain is a human concept. Call to her, if she is yours.”
Bola’s throat was dry. She stared as the captain worked a shard of crystal free, as she prodded beneath, like a thief in a highblood’s chest of jewels. Then the captain removed something from a plate in her own hand. A single vein of glowing silver. She worked it under the ochre’s skin, connecting them like mother and child. She tipped her head back, eyes blinking rapidly as though in rapture, and the ochre’s eyes blinked in response.
Bola threw herself forward, not thinking, not caring, only knowing that she had to make it stop. The feverborn captain spun aside. She stuck out one foot, sending Bola tumbling to the ground.
The feverborn roared with metallic laughter. But Bola scarcely heard them. Behind the captain, something stirred in the grass, glowing red-brown in the strange light from the fire. Bola’s pulse quickened. A smile creeped onto her lips as eyes like two red stars appeared above the grasses.
“I told you, she is mine,” Bola said again. “And I am hers.”
The ochre horse reared back on her hind legs, wonderful and terrible to behold. Vines and flowers slid from her glowing body and from deep within her came a rattling whicker. The captain turned in time to see the horse’s mighty crystal hooves crash down. Pinned, the dagger flew from her grip.
A human would have been crushed beneath those hooves, but the captain’s chest was not made of flesh and bone. She batted feebly at the ochre’s legs, trying to reach her iwisa. Her soldiers formed a tight circle, advancing slowly, drawing swords. Bola opened her mouth to cry a warning, but there was no need. With a final snort in the captain’s face, the horse leapt, passing clean over the heads of the three nearest feverborn and landing in a spray of mud at Bola’s side.
Bola was not as nimble as she had once been, but she could still climb the hill to the borehole. So she threw her arms around the ochre’s neck—so warm, throbbing with life—and hauled herself gracelessly up.
Then she was flying, or so it seemed. Past the angry knot of feverborn. Past the acacia tree and the grasses. North; the night streaking by, the wind snatching at her iro.
Bola had no fear of falling. Generals and kings wore saddles when they rode to war, but Bola would never demean the ochre so. Her ancient, proud ochre. Besides, a curious energy drew her skin to the horse’s crystal body, clamping her tight. And though the crystal of the ochre’s back was angular and hard as stone, it did not chafe or dig. It was as if her body had moulded to accommodate Bola.
As if they had been born for each other.
“How many have you carried, over the centuries?” Bola whispered, leaning down, though the ochre had no ears. “Not many, I’d guess. I never should have tried to claim you for my own. I should simply have given myself to you. You do not care about names or gifts, do you? I think you were waiting for me to be ready.”
Over the plains they streaked, Bola’s cheeks burning with her smile. It seemed no time at all had passed, but all too soon the sky to the east glowed red with the first light of dawn. Up ahead, the land fell away and down there, Bola saw a great mass of darkness. At first, she took it for a vast forest, but then the truth of it became clear. A host; thousands, perhaps tens of thousands strong. Their chittering carried to her on the morning breeze. This was no mere army; it was an invasion, and nothing would stand in its path.
Bola thought of Echu; of Matani and the others—safe, she hoped, behind the walls of Maadu. Or not so safe. Large and strong as Maadu was, it could never hope to stand before a host such as this. She had to warn them. Had to let them know what was coming. Had to give them time to prepare. “Are you ready to run?” Bola said, leaning forward again. The techwork horse lifted her head and whinnied.
