“The Gifted, the ones with the forward scouts, sent word. She wished she had the courage to face him for it. They couldn’t even burn her properly.” The battle seemed louder. “Sanura went to the Goddess on that ship, never knowing we found land, never knowing we escaped the Cull. Taifa turned back to the beach, filled with the dead and dying in their thousands. Sanura had to call the Queen’s Guard to pull you off the poor thing.” “I remember hearing you bit it back and wouldn’t let go. “Do you remember how she’d tell the story of the dog that bit me when I was a child?” She went to the Goddess before it made ground.” “The Malawa arrived a few sun spans ago,” she told him. No more reports, no more talk of the strange gifts these savages wielded against her kind. She hated that, but he was her champion and she could not ask him to stay with her on a beached ship while her people, his soldiers, died. He had been near the front lines, fighting. His brows were knitted and sweat beaded on his shaved head. She wished she could do the same for him. “We landed on a peninsula bordered and bisected by mountains. Look.” She pointed to the mountains in the distance. The rest of the fleet will be here soon.” If this was to be the end of her people, she would bear witness. Taifa nodded, permitting him to speak, but did not turn away from the slaughter on the shore. She heard footsteps on the deck behind her and tried to take comfort in the sounds of Tsiory’s gait. It burned high overhead and the killing would not stop until well past nightfall, which meant too many more would die. Their screams, not so different from the cries of those they fought, washed over her in waves. The fighting men and women of the Chosen were already onshore, were already killing and dying. Queen Taifa stood at the bow of Targon, her beached warship, and looked out at the massacre on the sands.
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