“Krushan!”
Adri’s heightened senses informed him that the breach he was seeking lay directly ahead.
It was he who had found the breach and informed Shvate of its existence. Even though Shvate had eyes as sharp as an eagle’s, he had not been looking for it, while Adri, not needing to look with his eyes, had heard the absence of sound in that one particular spot that meant an empty space—a small but vital empty space.
Adri was now using that same heightened sense to race his chariot toward that breach. Yet even Adri’s own charioteer could not see the breach himself—there was too much debris and smoke still in the air in that area to see the narrow gap. It was only Adri’s acute hearing sensitivity that enabled him to guide his charioteer via a series of taps and touches on his back and shoulders, indicating which way to turn.
For several agonizing moments, they drove through dense smoke so thick and foul smelling that even Adri suffered a moment of self-doubt. If they continued through this and found a line of rebel chariots waiting with drawn bows beyond the haze, this would be his first and last battle tactic ever executed.
But then, with a sudden thrill, he sensed that the smoke had cleared and they were on the other side—and most importantly, that there were no enemy chariots waiting to greet them with arrows.
Adri heard his charioteer shout, “We are through, my prince!”
And then he heard his brother shout from behind.
“Attack!”
And the message was passed on from mouth to ear to mouth as the Krushan charioteers followed their princes’ lead and drove their vehicles through the breach.
Moments later, they were spotted.
Adri heard the sounds of enemy captains shouting at their forces, ordering them to “close that breach!” In another moment, he knew, the enemy would realize that the Krushan penetrating the breach were none other than the princes themselves—their main target. And then, the entire might of the rebel forces would descend upon this part of the battlefield. They would be assaulted on all sides by insurmountable forces and would go down in a hail of arrows, spears, javelins, elephants, cavalry, and the stone gods knew what else.
But for now, they were heroes.
They were princes.
They were brothers-in-arms.
They were Krushan.
“Krushan!” Adri yelled forcefully, drawing his bow and taking aim. He let loose, directing his arrow by sound at the thickest cluster of enemy he could sense.
He heard the thwa-thump of the arrow punching through armor and piercing flesh and bone, heard the startled cry of the man, and heard him fall to the ground, crushed under the wheels of the chariot behind him.
My first kill.
“Krushan!” he cried again, and loosed a second arrow.
Adri heard Shvate echo the battle cry and loose an arrow as well, at the same instant as Adri’s second arrow found a home in the throat of another rebel charioteer. The man emitted a gurgle and fell back in the well of his own chariot, spasming as his heels drummed out the rhythm of death. Adri was already loosing a third arrow before the man died, then a fourth, and a fifth, as rebel charioteers converged on him from all sides.
Then he was in the thick of battle, being shot at and attacked and fighting back and loosing arrows and yelling until he was hoarse and his fingers bled from the bowstring and his hand found only an empty quiver as it reached over and over, instinctively, for the next arrow that was no longer there.