The Rage of Dragons

by Evan Winter

  “Point…,” the Proven said, voice rising like it was a question.

  Uduak shot the Proven a look, growled, grabbed Tau’s sword, and tore it from his hands. He tossed the weapon across the circle, snatched a fistful of Tau’s gambeson, and yanked him close, bringing them face-to-face.

  Tau punched him. Uduak didn’t seem to notice. Tau hit him again. Uduak smashed his forehead into Tau’s face and let him drop to the ground, blood gushing from Tau’s cut. Uduak’s brick of a head had torn free all the scabbing.

  Uduak kicked him in the side and Tau cried out. For some reason, he could no longer hear the crowd, though he could see them all around him, screaming, demanding more violence. And one person stood out. It was someone he recognized. Jayyed Ayim, ex-adviser to the Guardian Council and umqondisi to the Ihashe isikolo, was watching.

  “He has a twelve count to rise,” the Proven shouted over the crowd to Uduak. “Or… you can finish him.”

  “He is finished,” the big man said.

  Tau was weaponless and battered. He had no strength left and no chance to beat the man who stood over him. He was going to lose and wanted to lie there in the mix of blood, sand, and shame. He wanted to lie there and die.

  Uduak leaned over him. “Nine,” he snarled, spitting in Tau’s face, before turning away and lifting his arms in victory.

  The thick gob of phlegmy saliva clung to Tau’s cheek and neck. He left it there when he stood. He left it there when he ran at Uduak and tackled him.

  The big man squawked as they went down. They rolled once, Tau got on top, and he rained down blows. Uduak still had his sword and shield, but from his back and in close combat, they were more hindrance than help.

  “Nceku!” Tau swore in Uduak’s face. “Nceku! Nceku!”

  Uduak needed a free hand to deal with Tau but couldn’t shake his shield free. He dropped his sword and used that hand to grab Tau by the head. He squeezed and tossed Tau aside like he was a child.

  Tau landed beside the enormous sword, picked it up, and squared off with Uduak, who had only his shield. The crowd was silent.

  Uduak stared at Tau like he was the only other being in existence. “I’m going to kill you.”

  Tau was having a hard enough time holding the huge sword and couldn’t think of a response. So he attacked. Uduak opened his shield, offering up a perfect target, and Tau stabbed him full in the chest.

  Uduak took the blow, took hold of Tau’s right wrist, the one holding the sword, and pulled Tau to him. If the blades had been uncovered, if they had been razor sharp, Uduak would have died. The blade was not sharp. The blade was not uncovered. It did not kill Uduak. It dug into his gambeson, cutting into his flesh a fingerspan, and he bashed it away, still holding Tau’s wrist.

  “Point!” screeched the Proven. “That was a point!”

  Tau struggled and Uduak lifted his bronze shield into the air, aiming its edge. Tau’s eyes went wide, fear coursing through him. He fought Uduak’s grip but might as well have pulled on a mountain. Uduak brought the shield down and Tau was screaming before it smashed into his wrist. His screams grew louder when the bones there shattered.

  Uduak released him and Tau went down, clutching his mangled arm. Uduak lifted the shield again, aiming for Tau’s chest.

  “Nine!” Uduak bellowed, but Tau didn’t hear him over the pain.

  “Two hundred! Two hundred! The match is over!” called the Proven, hobbling over as fast as he could on one leg and crutches.

  Uduak turned to the Proven in disbelief and back to Tau. His lips were curled, teeth bared, and the muscles on his arms were flexed, tensed with the need to cave in Tau’s chest.

  “Kill him and you forfeit!” said the Proven.

  Uduak screamed in frustration, tossed the shield aside, and sent a boot flying for Tau’s head, knocking him senseless.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SCALE

  Tau woke on a raised straw pallet. It was night and he was in a large room with several other beds. His head throbbed and his wrist was splinted. He moaned and two shadows approached.

  “Where am I?” Tau asked, throat dry as a dead man’s eyes.

  “The Ihashe barracks in Kigambe,” answered the smaller of the two shadowed men. His accent reeked of High Governor caste. “We have been accepted as initiates, though the third day of trials is still to come.”

  “Accepted?” asked Tau.

  “Yes, you’re right to question it.” The smaller man stepped into the light. He was a little taller than Tau, fit if wiry, and, unusual for Lessers, had green eyes. “My name is Hadith and I won ten matches. You already know him.”

  The second and much bigger man stepped into the light. It was Uduak. He looked like he wanted to finish the job he’d started in the fighting circle.

  “Uduak beat the piss from you,” Hadith said, “went on to win his next match and the match after that. He also has ten wins… plus a tie. Which makes you a strange case.” Hadith tapped his lower lip with a finger. “I have ten wins. Uduak has ten wins. But you? You have five wins, a tie, and a broken arm. Yet, we three are Ihashe initiates together. The Goddess grows and reaps while mortals dream, does she not?”

  “Water?” Tau asked, trying not to beg.

  “We leave for the Southern Isikolo once the trials are over,” Hadith told him. “Uduak isn’t sure he’s coming. The umqondisi said that if you died, Uduak would lose his place. He’s been watching over you like a worried mother.”

  Uduak glared at Tau, flexing and unflexing his fists. Tau tried to glare back, but glaring hurt.

  “Water?” he asked, begging this time.

  “Ask Uduak,” Hadith said. “He’s the one who needs you alive.”

  Hadith left and Uduak growled, slipping back into the shadows. Apparently, Uduak believed Tau would live without the water. Tau closed his eyes and tried to lose consciousness, if only to hide from the pain in his wrist. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, but when he opened his eyes again, it was morning.

  Umqondisi Jayyed Ayim was there. He had food and water. Tau, mouth too dry to talk, and still in the clutches of sleep, reached for the water with his broken arm. The pain woke him the rest of the way.

  “Takes longer than a day to heal,” Jayyed said. “How are you, otherwise?”

  “Thirsty,” Tau said, looking over the middle-aged umqondisi as Jayyed helped him drink.

  Jayyed was big for a Lesser, and well muscled, though nothing like Uduak. He had broad shoulders, sat straight-backed, and though his irises were dark, his eyes seemed to shine. He radiated strength, and, somehow, there was softness there too. Maybe it was his mouth, Tau thought. He looked like a man who preferred smiling.

  “I’ve accepted you into the Ihashe isikolo,” Jayyed told him. “It may be a mistake, but it’s rare I’m surprised, and yesterday surprised me. We Omehi are warriors, and even among us, few have your… determination.”

  Jayyed helped Tau drink another sip. Tau sputtered and drank more, and Jayyed leaned in. “In a less cruel world, that determination would have made up for the gulf in skill between you and Uduak. This is not that world.”

  “Perhaps not,” Tau tried, unsure how to respond.

  “Trust me, it’s not.”

  “Why take me, then?” Tau asked, pride pricking him.

  “I know who you are, Tau Tafari,” Jayyed said. “I remember you from the citadel testing. Though you didn’t have that then.” Jayyed waved a finger at Tau’s face, near the fissure Lekan had carved across it. “It would have become infected, you know. I had the Sah priests attend to it, as well as your… more recent injuries. I can also guess why you’re here, why you want to become Ihashe.”

  “My name is Tau Solarin,” Tau said, offering nothing else. He’d made it farther than it was fair to hope.

  “Solarin? Your father’s name?” Jayyed guessed. “And Low Common instead of High?”

  “My name is Tau Solarin.”

  Jayyed inclined his head, his eyes never leaving Tau
’s face. “So it is,” he said. “Common Solarin, let me explain my interest, and you can tell me if it’s warranted. Agreed?”

  Tau nodded.

  “I’ve been a military man for most my life, and throughout that time, I’ve chased the techniques, training, and men that make the perfect killer. The other teachers at the isikolo, given my prior posting as adviser to the Guardian Council, are willing to indulge me. They’ve given me a scale and will allow me to test my theories on the men in it. I’m interested in having you as one of them.”

  “My thanks,” said Tau, not sure if thankful was a good description for how he felt.

  “Maybe,” Jayyed said, offering a cryptic smile. “I will push my initiates hard, taking them as close as I can to breaking, every single day. We will practice violence, we will hone it, and we will master it. I intend to turn the Lessers in my scale into warriors that are a near match for the Indlovu.”

  Tau’s ears perked at that.

  “I do it not for pride. I do it to prove that superior training methods exist that will produce superior fighters. I do it so these methods, once proven, can be adopted by all. I do it for our people’s survival. Will you share my goal? Will you work toward it?”

  Tau nodded, no hesitation this time. He thought of his father and he pictured Kellan, Dejen, and Odili. There was no limit to what he would do to face them as equals.

  “I thought you might,” said Jayyed. “I’m taking a chance with you, Common Solarin. You don’t know how much of one and you may never know, but if you will put yourself through the crucible, live each day of training like you lived each moment of yesterday’s fight, we’ll find the man you were meant to be. And, alongside the other men in Scale Jayyed, we will show Lessers and Nobles just how far a man can go.”

  Jayyed stood. “Hopefully, we are the beginnings of a new Chosen military and, Goddess willing, that military will be enough to keep us all safe. We travel to the Southern Ihashe Isikolo tomorrow. Training begins when we arrive.”

  Tau hesitated, but his concern had to be voiced. “Umqondisi… he broke my sword arm.”

  Jayyed’s face was not sympathetic. “Praise the Goddess, She gave you two.”

  ISIKOLO

  The journey from Kigambe to the Southern Isikolo took most of the day. Tau was one of three and a half thousand new initiates, and though it was hard for him to admit, he was excited. Since he’d been a child, he’d dreamed of this day, and all the men around him had shared that same dream. They had done it. They were Ihashe initiates.

  Tau stole glances at his new sword brothers. There was Uduak, of course, who was marching near the front of the scale, as close to Jayyed as he could get. Hadith was closer to the middle, chewing on a boiled root vegetable. The rest, the fifty-one other men Jayyed had selected, were Lessers, but that was where their similarities with Tau ended.

  Physically, the fighters in Scale Jayyed were as close to Nobles as Lessers ever came. Every one of them looked like he had the strength to run to the horizon, hand-plow a field, fight a battle, and stay up drinking till dawn. Jayyed had been particular in the men he’d chosen, and Tau did not fit the mold.

  The other scales were more in line with Tau’s expectations. In them, he saw the kinds of men he knew, men like himself. They didn’t care about that, though. They’d have nothing to do with him. It was the first day and there was already a divide between Scale Jayyed and the others.

  The isikolo leadership had allowed Jayyed to handpick his scale before the other umqondisi had a chance to make their choices. Many were annoyed at the breach in custom, and their frustration had passed through to their initiates. Jayyed’s group was disliked, and given the looks he got from everyone within and without Scale Jayyed, none were as disliked as Tau, the initiate who hadn’t won ten matches or made it to day three.

  “Double-time!” came the call from the front, one umqondisi after another repeating the order. The column picked up the pace, running at half-speed over the tall and sun-browned grass that carpeted the valley floor.

  Tau let his thoughts fade, focusing on the run. He was tired and injured and would have loved nothing more than to stop. He refused to do it, though. He told himself he could stop when he could no longer make the next step. He also told himself he could always make at least the next step.

  He counted them that way, in ones. One step, one step, one step. It kept him going, to think of the task in its smallest pieces. One step, one step. When the call was made to return to a standard march, Tau was blowing hard, the slash across his face burned, and his broken wrist throbbed, but he hadn’t stopped, and the run had taken them to their destination, with Scale Jayyed at the front of the column.

  It was Jayyed who called the halt. Tau was beside him. Uduak and Hadith, too, stuck to the sword master’s hip like twin scabbards.

  Jayyed glowered at his scale, but Tau could see through that. Their umqondisi couldn’t hide his pride.

  “Welcome to the Southern Ihashe Isikolo,” he said.

  The military academy stood behind him. It was a soot-colored monolith that dwarfed the keep in Kerem. The isikolo was larger than the Onai’s keep, pentagonal instead of circular, and its walls were higher. It was located a thousand strides from the ocean, built on the same ground where Champion Tsiory made his first advance camp, after he’d pushed the hedeni from the beach, or so the story went. Given its walls, twice as thick as keep Kerem, the heavy bronze gates, and the watchmen posted at every corner, the isikolo seemed impregnable. It would take a massive force to siege and take it.

  “Inside,” shouted Jayyed.

  Inside the walls, the isikolo was filled with uniform one-story buildings. Tau thought he could identify the ones that were barracks, but that was it. Jayyed handed them off to a Proven attendant who would help the initiates learn their way around the compound.

  “Name is Limbani,” the sour-faced guide, missing an arm and eye, told Scale Jayyed. “I’ll show you around, get you fed and bunked.”

  Other Proven were doing the same, acting as guides and introducing themselves to the incoming scales. Limbani began walking, prompting Tau and the others to follow.

  “Over there, mess hall,” he told his group, pointing with his one arm to the hundred-stride-long building near the center of the isikolo. “That’s the armory; there is the umqondisi quarter; that way leads to the training grounds; latrines are there, there, and there. And, most important, over there is the infirmary.” Limbani smirked. “You’ll become well acquainted with the infirmary.”

  A few men muttered at that.

  “On to your barracks. We’ll settle you in, nice and comfortable, neh?”

  Scale Jayyed’s barracks, a long adobe hut with thin straw pallets running its length, was large enough for the fifty-four men in the scale. Uduak was first to claim a spot and took the cot closest to the door. After that, there was some jockeying for position, though Tau wasn’t sure what made one spot better than another. He wound up with a cot near the rear of the building, next to a tall but slim-built man with a hacking cough that didn’t stop.

  “Tau,” Tau said to him.

  The man coughed, turned his back, and placed his pack on his cot. “Chinedu,” he said.

  “It’s mealtime,” Limbani told the initiates. “Better to be early rather’n late.”

  “Gonna… go… eat,” coughed out Chinedu, and he left.

  Most of the scale did likewise. Tau stowed his gear under the knee-high cot and sat on the bed that had become his.

  He thought of his father, of Aren Solarin, who had deserved so much more from life than it had given. He lay back. Perhaps Aren had slept in this same spot, so many cycles ago, dreaming of what his life would bring.

  Tau tried to imagine his own life as it might have been. He couldn’t. Only days had passed, and somehow, he was too far gone to ever go back.

  He closed his eyes. Time to rest. In the morning he’d begin day one of his cycle of training. One cycle to learn how to kill men like the Ind
lovu, to become a military man, to take vengeance.

  Tau frowned and poked at the raw skin on his face. This wasn’t the life he wanted. He pictured Zuri, conjuring up a happy memory, trying to determine if there was a chance at something more as his fingernail caught and pulled on the edge of his wound.

  He hissed at the pain and a drop of blood slid across his cheek and into the corner of his eye. He wiped away the red tear and the memory. One cycle.

  TRAINING

  He was up first. The sun hadn’t risen, but the barracks were hot as a furnace and stunk of sweat. Tau, dressed in the same clothes he’d worn the day before, gathered his gear and made his way to the mess hall.

  There were a few other initiates and a couple of umqondisi there, eating at one of the hundred trestle tables in the huge space. The food sat in large heated pots along the north and south sides of the building. Tau ladled the pot’s steaming mush into an earthenware bowl and found a seat.

  He couldn’t tell what he ate, but it was better than anything he’d had to eat back home, and it boggled his mind to think he could finish his bowl, walk back to one of the pots, and refill. To prove it was possible, he did just that.

  After eating, Tau left the mess hall to explore. It was getting busier. Drudge went about the work that kept the academy running, and he saw several umqondisi walking toward the initiate barracks.

  “Tau!” a voice called. It was Jayyed. “If you’re already up, follow me to the training grounds. Anan, my aqondise, is gathering the others.”

  Tau fell into step with Jayyed’s long strides, walking fast to keep up with the much taller man. They were headed for gates on the opposite side of the isikolo.

  “You’ve eaten? Good,” Jayyed said.

  Two guards opened the bronze gates. Once through, Tau got his first look at the isikolo’s main training grounds.

  For a thousand strides in each direction, the grasslands had been cleared and the ground was an enormous fighting circle, surfaced with packed clay. Already, several scales were at work, doing warm-up exercises, sword forms, or sparring. Tau marveled at the scope of the training grounds, imagining what it would look like when the majority of the initiates were on it at the same time.