A horn announced my arrival as we rode toward Thevan. He stood at a small table in the corner of a garden that was walled off from the beach but close enough to hear the signals from the battle. The flowers here had been trampled into the earth until their colors were lost. A stack of coconut torches lay near a robust fire whose smoke obfuscated the view, making the once vibrant garden gray.
“Report, General,” I said.
Thevan stood at straight attention, but he brushed his hand over the rakhi I’d tied to the hilt of his talwar. “You should be with the rajkumari.”
“Don’t waste my time.” I dismounted and strode to his side. “Report.”
Thevan saluted, instantly becoming a soldier instead of a friend. Or whatever he was. “They’re attacking from the sea. And they keep coming. They’re fighting with greater ferocity than ever before, and any soldier that gets too close is snatched up and taken away.”
He gestured at the X’s on a map. “We have fires for the coconut torches all along the beach, but once we contain one group of Porcugi, another arrives. Even with the coconut torches and the turmeric arrows, it’s difficult.”
I studied the parchment on the table as Thevan spoke. A line of X’s ran parallel to the fort’s beach wall, and two more arcs of X’s extended off the line and created semicircles toward the port. A few on the outer arc had been scribbled out, so I assumed those fires had been compromised during the battle.
A horn on the beach blasted four short notes and two long, then two short and two long. Thevan slammed his fist onto the table, and Parushi paled.
My general rubbed his forehead as he crossed out two more of the fires on the outermost arc. He called out to the man with the horn, “Fall back to the inner arc!”
The horn’s command was taken up, and there was even more shouting from the beach. Thevan turned to me. “Our soldiers are giving everything they can, but I don’t know how much longer we can hold them. You need to get to safety.”
“I’m not leaving.” I stared at the smoke billowing up from the beach.
A wail pierced the air, and there was a thud followed by feral screams.
“The general’s son is dead!” someone yelled, and more and more voices took up the call.
“The general’s son? What son?” I asked Thevan, who stared at me in confusion. He was my only general, and he had no son?—even if he’d fathered a child, the boy wouldn’t have been old enough to fight. What general could they mean?
Thevan frowned, and Parushi looked at me like I had two heads. Maybe five.
“What are you talking about?” Parushi had to shout to be heard over the pandemonium.
There was a loud cheer as the horns blasted a signal I did not recognize.
“One of their leaders has fallen,” Thevan said. “The ones with rings on their hoods seem to be in charge, and one of them was killed.”
One oftheirleaders. The only ones on the beach were us and the Porcugi. Perhapstheirgeneral’s son had been killed. I listened to the sounds on the beach more carefully. The yells of our soldiers were clear and crisp, but there were other voices too. They spoke with a strange accent and carried theirs’s for far too long, much like the voices I’d heard in Banghervari. Matanta had said the Spirits had given me many gifts...
“Rani, are you?—” Parushi began.
“Shh!” I held my hand up.
“Fall back! Fall back to the general!” The strange voices were so clearly inhuman now.
There was only one explanation: I could understand the Porcugi.
Chapter 50
“We need to go to the beach!” I mounted Sima and pointed to the trumpeter. “You, come with me!”
Thevan and Parushi stood in front of my horse.
“You are the rani.” Thevan gripped the rakhi. “Even your uncle stayed back in battle after becoming the raja. This battle isn’t more important than the war. Please, stay.”
He wasn’t telling me; he was asking. So I tapped down the indignation that was creeping up my throat.
“I intend to win the battleandthe war.” I threw my hand out toward the beach. “I can understand them! Let’s go!”
Thevan looked from me toward the wall between us and the beach, as if he could see the attacking Porcugi on the other side, and Parushi gave me the sort of face that she usually saved for Vishwajeet.
