Karni

Karni was fighting for her life, Adran beside her.

Both of them were doing everything they could to keep the mob of maniacs at bay. The poor horse, Sreela, had long since succumbed, and now the chariot was surrounded on all sides by people. Men, women, and children, old and young, fat and thin, ailing and healthy and strong and weak—all manner of folk. The one thing, the only thing, that they all had in common was madness. Every single one of them was utterly out of their mind.

Their eyes were dilated, bulging from their sockets, their tongues lolling, their limbs splayed, flopping in all directions like the tentacles of some sea creature rather than mammalian bipeds. They seemed to have lost all control of their limbs. Whether running or attacking, they seemingly had no means of regulating where their hands went, how their legs moved, where their eyes were looking.

A middle-aged woman with streaks of grey in her hair was trying to climb over the well of the chariot, but backward, flailing her legs and arms as if that would enable her to get over. Karni winced as she struck the woman’s shoulder with the hilt of her sword, knocking her off balance. The woman fell back to the street and was instantly stamped on and climbed over by others seeking to get at the chariot. Disturbing to behold though it was, it was this lack of bodily control that was keeping the mob from overrunning them. Had these same people had full command of their bodies, they would easily have overwhelmed the chariot. However fiercely Karni and Adran might fight, they were no match for a hundred attackers. Or two hundred. Or however many there were surrounding them.

Karni had lost all sense of numbers or time. Her arrows had run out a while ago, and she had picked up a sword in one hand and was using the bow like a staff in the other, striking with the hilt and the flat of the blade whenever possible. Adran was not as considerate. He was hacking and cutting down people without a second thought. She knew that she would have to start doing the same any moment now. There were just too many of these lunatics and only two of them.

But are they really mad? Karni couldn’t quite understand how so many people could just lose their minds all of a sudden. And why were they all attacking her chariot?

A burly man in a rich noble’s robes tried to climb onto the rear of the chariot. Adran’s face was turned for a second as he dealt with another attacker, and the man lunged at the charioteer’s back, teeth bared in a wolflike snarl.

“Charioteer!” Karni called.

She lashed out with the sword, catching the man’s forehead with the blunt side of the blade. A strip of skin tore free, sending blood washing down the man’s face, over his right eye. The man turned toward Karni—not even blinking his eye, despite the blood running into it—and snarled at her, lunging in her direction now. She struck out with the bow, but he snatched it and wrenched hard, twisting her wrist to breaking point; she let it fall.

He came at her with the viciousness of a hungry wolf.

The man was twice Karni’s height and as wide around as her arms could spread. She cried out in distress and plunged the blade into his torso out of a sense of self-preservation. The sword pierced his chest, and she felt the blade strike bone and catch. The man growled at her, teeth snapping at the hand that held the sword. Karni yanked back the weapon and swept it at his head again as he came at her once more. This time she hacked at his neck—with the edge rather than the flat of the blade—and almost severed the man’s head with the blow; he toppled sideways, his weight knocking down several others with him.

Blood spattered across Karni, all over her hands and face and hair. But she had no time for revulsion, so she spat it out and brought the sword about to stave off a pair of young girls in nightdresses climbing over the chariot’s side, hitting one with the hilt, the other with the heel of her palm. The blow jarred her funny bone, and her hand went numb for an instant. She used the other hand with the bow to defend herself as the numb hand fell useless by her side.

The strangest thing about the mob surrounding them was how silent they were. Not one person was speaking, or shouting, or saying anything coherent. The only noises they made were snarls, growls, and other animal sounds. It was as if they had all lost the power of speech and all other normal human faculties had been replaced with the single-minded need to attack, maim, kill, and destroy.

“Princess!” Adran shouted. “We must break free of this mob.”

Karni used the points of the bow to jab another pair of attackers in their faces, shaking her numb hand to try and restore circulation faster. “How do we do that?”

Adran slashed the point of the lance across several attackers at once. Karni tried not to look at the blood spurting and the ugly gashes caused by the weapon.

“I will draw them upon myself, while you climb over that wall,” he said, gesturing quickly with the lance before swinging it down forcefully across the neck of another assailant.

Karni looked in the direction he had indicated; he meant the wall about three yards away. If she climbed onto the edge of the well of the chariot, she could probably climb onto the top of the wall. There were fewer attackers on that side because of the chariot’s proximity to the wall. It was a good plan, except for one thing.

“What about you?”

He jabbed the point of the lance into the throat of an attacker. She averted her eyes from the point of impact—it was a young woman in her bridal attire.

“My Krushan law is to serve and protect you, my princess.”

Karni felt the tingling pain that indicated her arm was awake again. She hefted the sword, swinging it at an old man struggling to climb over the chariot. The hilt cracked his nose, breaking it, and he toppled backward, disappearing into the mob.

“I will not leave without you, charioteer. We fight together, we leave together.”

Adran cursed as three attackers came at him at once. Karni wanted to go to his aid, but there were several on her side as well. Were there more of them coming now than before? It certainly seemed like it. She tried to see beyond the crowd of manic-eyed, frenzied miens lolling up at her from all directions. The entire street appeared to be moving, seething with faces and limbs. Holy Goddess Jeel! How many were there? Was all Hastinaga trying to kill her? What insanity was this?

“Where is the city guard? The royal guard?” she asked, as she fought off attackers with both the bow and the sword. Her arms were starting to hurt now.

Adran was sweating profusely and sucking in air in gulps between strikes. “I fear we are on our own, Princess. We must fend for ourselves.”

But just then, a sound attracted her attention. A sound like the ocean tide.

Karni looked up at the street ahead, the same crossroads that they had been headed toward an hour—or was it two hours?—ago, and was shocked by what she saw.

Thousands more people were swarming down the street now. Climbing over walls. Down the side of houses. They were falling over each other, trampling one another, stampeding . . . All rushing toward the chariot.

Coming to kill Karni.

She felt her heart leap in her chest. “Goddess!”

Adran glanced up, and she saw the look of horror on his face. “Surya!”

So dense was the crowd that it actually pushed and crushed the people who were already surrounding the chariot, pressing their bodies against the sides of the vehicle. Karni heard the sound of metal and wood cracking and crumpling, saw the sides of the chariot starting to buckle. The weight of thousands of bodies pushed down the street, cracking the bones of the vehicle. She felt the floor heave under her feet, starting to rise and crack. Her tired arms fell by her sides.

The attackers had mostly stopped now, crushed between the horde flowing down the street and the walls of the chariot. She saw their bodies being pushed so hard, their eyes popped loose of their sockets, their shoulders dislocated, then broke, legs and hips cracked, flesh mashed into bloody pulp like grapes in a press . . .

But Adran had stopped fighting too.

He and Karni both looked at each other, and this time he did not suggest she escape.

There were people coming over the wall as well, literally falling over it in their eagerness to get at the chariot. She could hear the sickening sound their bodies made as they thumped onto those already trapped between the chariot and the wall, bone striking bone, striking flesh, striking skulls. The chariot was crumbling to pieces now, and she felt as if it would collapse upon itself at any moment, smashing her and Adran into the same pulp as those poor unfortunates.

That was when she looked up and saw the sun rise in the middle of the night.