The Rage of Dragons

by Evan Winter

  “Scale ready!” Anan said. “Umqondisi present.”

  Tau lined up with the others and Jayyed walked the line, looking the men up and down.

  “You are my five,” he said. “You are the warriors who will be my proudest creation. You will become the Ihashe that are my legacy.” No one said a word. “I’ve told many of you the cost for greatness is time. The rest of my scale puts in time. They put in work. You put in more and you work harder. You will be better. It is the natural order and the secret path to brilliance—put in more, get out more.”

  Jayyed stood at the center of the line of five men. He was in front of Tau, as if speaking only to him.

  “Know you’re not owed your spot,” Jayyed said to them, said to Tau. “You can and will be replaced if you’re outperformed. However, if you maintain your place, you will train and learn as much in a single cycle at the isikolo as the Indlovu learn in three at the citadel. You are Lessers, but you’ll fight as hard as Nobles.”

  Tau took a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. This was what he needed. This was everything he wanted.

  “Know this as well,” Jayyed continued. “Improvement can only come through intentioned effort. Every day must be hard for you. The days without difficulty are the days you do not improve. The days you do not improve are the days the men behind you close the distance. It’s then you give your enemies hope. Hope that, when they meet you in battle, they have done enough to finish you.”

  Jayyed drew his guardian dagger. Tau had not noticed him wearing it. The blade, dragon scale, was blacker than the darkest night. It looked like someone had torn away the fabric of the world and forgotten to replace it, leaving nothingness in its stead.

  Jayyed held it high. “On the days you do not improve, you open yourself to the blade that will gut you, the knife that will enter your heart, and the hatchet or spear that will take your life.

  “To defend against failure, every day must be hard. Every day must strengthen you. For it’s in the crucible of hard days that potential becomes power.”

  Jayyed stepped closer, within arm’s length of Tau. “The wars you’ll wage aren’t decided when you fight them. They’re decided before that by the extent of your efforts and the substance of your sacrifices. They’re decided by the choices you make every single day. So ask yourself: How powerful do I choose to be?”

  A spell had been cast. None dared break it. They stood like statues.

  Jayyed lowered the dagger and sheathed it. “Today, we do not train within our scale. Today, we put down our wooden swords and skirmish against the others.

  “Go to the barracks and tell the rest of my men. Break your fast and gather your bronze, blade and shield. You’ll fight as a unit and we’ll see how powerful you’ve chosen to be.”

  On the way back to the barracks, Chinedu, in spite of his wretched cough, wouldn’t shut up. “See the… dagger, did you? Dragon scale, neh?”

  Uduak, head down, and voice tree-root deep said, “We saw.”

  The taciturn response didn’t satisfy Chinedu. “Got to… fight the other… scales now.”

  “You’re going to drive me insane with that coughing,” said Hadith.

  “To ash with… you, then,” he coughed out. “Got a problem with… my throat, haven’t I?”

  “It’s to be a skirmish,” Yaw said, rubbing a sunburnt hand over his sunburnt head and flaking off dead flesh. Yaw was as light-skinned as an Omehi ever was and his coppery skin was never quite up to Xidda’s sun. He was always blotchy and peeling, an inyoka shedding its skin.

  Hadith spat in the dirt and turned to Yaw. “It’s getting us ready for when we skirmish in the Crags against the Indlovu. They want us to start off against each other. Get a feel for scale on scale.”

  “Don’t go… to the Crags for another moon cycle yet,” said Chinedu.

  “That’s why it’s called getting someone ready, you inkumbe,” said Hadith.

  Chinedu bristled but did nothing. Hadith was good with his sword; besides, he’d grown close with Uduak, who would pummel Chinedu, for his cough if nothing else.

  “How does it work?” asked Tau, startling the rest.

  “It speaks!” said Hadith.

  “It shouldn’t,” growled Uduak.

  Yaw took pity and explained. “When we go at the Indlovu, we’ll outnumber them three to one. Sometimes they have Enervators, sometimes not. The numbers don’t matter much. They always crush us. We’re meant to mimic the odds the Indlovu face in the Wrist, when they go up against the hedeni, them being so numerous and all.”

  “He meant what’s today supposed to be like,” said Hadith.

  “How you know that, then? What he meant, neh?” said Chinedu, perhaps coming to Yaw’s defense, but more likely looking for any opportunity to take Hadith down a peg.

  Hadith ignored him and lectured Tau. “Today they’ll draw straws or pull names or some such. Our scale will be up against another scale. When we do it in the Crags, against the Indlovu, there are fighting grounds set up—”

  “A mountain one, a desert one, even a city one, where they have pretend huts and longhouses and everything,” said Yaw, interrupting Hadith.

  “We face Indlovu soon. In a moon cycle,” said Tau, thinking about Kellan, wondering if he’d be there and if he’d get to fight him. His thoughts turned dark, then worrisome. Tau wondered how ready he’d be to kill again. He wondered if he was good enough and didn’t like the answer that came back.

  “We’ll lose,” Uduak said, breaking some self-imposed rule by speaking to Tau.

  “Ihashe always lose to Indlovu. The Nobles like it that way,” said Hadith. “Reminds us where we stand.”

  Yaw smiled. “It’ll be different this time.”

  Hadith gave him a look. “What’s that?”

  “We’re with Jayyed. He won a guardian dagger and knows how to get us good enough to give the Indlovu a real go.”

  “You think?” said Hadith. “You think we’ll be anything against a scale of Nobles?”

  “I’ll fight,” Uduak growled.

  “Oh, I’ll fight too,” said Hadith. “Mostly ’cause we don’t have a choice. Fighting isn’t my worry. It’s the winning I’m not convinced of.”

  “We’ll kill them,” Tau said.

  The other men fell silent and Hadith gave him a look.

  “Your mouth, Goddess’s ears,” Hadith said as the five men went into their barracks to tell the rest of their scale that it was time to fight.

  BRONZE

  It felt strange, holding bronze again. Tau had his practice sword in his off hand and a shield on his right, more to protect the broken wrist than anything else. It wasn’t much and the shield felt awkward, but some protection was better than none.

  He stood on one of the isikolo’s several small battlefields. This one was square, extending a hundred strides in each direction, and the valley’s water-starved grass rose to midcalf, making it somewhat difficult to run.

  Tau was beside Yaw and Chinedu, near the front of their scale’s formation but a row back from Uduak and Hadith. They were facing Scale Chisomo. It was a good first test, Jayyed’s fifty-four against Chisomo’s.

  Chisomo, a newer umqondisi, was Jayyed’s opposite. He was much younger and already a staunch traditionalist. His training focused on forms and he placed little stock in free sparring. And while Jayyed was tough on discipline, Chisomo exalted it as an art. His men polished their bronze swords and shields every evening and spent a substantial amount of time marching around the training grounds in perfect time.

  Tau didn’t know how well Scale Chisomo could fight. He was pretty sure they would work well together, though, and that wasn’t something he could say for his own scale.

  Two aqondise stood between the scales, acting as skirmish judges. The rules were simple. A fighter was “alive” until a bone in his body broke, he touched the ground with anything but his feet or knees, he was rendered unconscious, or he called for the Goddess’s mercy.

  The a
qondise watched for cheaters and the skirmish was won when one side was eliminated. Easy, like real war; all you had to do was survive long enough to slaughter your enemy.

  “Scale Jayyed, weapons up! Scale Chisomo, weapons up!” called one of the aqondise.

  The sound of bronze blades being unsheathed rang out across the field. Many of the other umqondisi, aqondise, initiates, Proven, and even a few Drudge had come to see the first day of skirmishes, and Tau was near enough to the battlefield’s edge to hear men making bets. The odds were in Chisomo’s favor. Scale Jayyed was filled with brutes, but, the thinking went, brutes were no match for disciplined men.

  “Fight!” the same aqondise screamed.

  The two judges ran for the sidelines and the men of Scale Jayyed charged, howling like bloodthirsty predators. Chisomo’s men were not cowed. They split into three smaller but equal teams. Tau recognized the formation from his father’s war stories. It was a standard Chosen military tactic, usually executed by an entire wing, but the principles were the same even with one-tenth the men.

  The outer splits of the three-pronged attack aimed to flank Scale Jayyed, while the middle split joined shields and held fast. The middle would take the brunt of the charge, and if they held against the initial assault, the outer splits would be able to pick off half of Jayyed’s men in short order. There was only one thing for it. Scale Jayyed had to smash through the middle and break free of the flanking maneuver.

  Hadith saw the same thing. “Three-prong flank!” he shouted. “Break the middle!”

  They crashed into their opponents and were among swords and shields. Everywhere were snarling faces, flickering blades, and the metallic tang of oiled bronze and sweat-slicked gambesons. It was nothing like the training. It was more like Daba. Chaos.

  Tau saw Uduak knock a man off the Chisomo defensive line and follow him into the middle of the enemy. Hadith tried to call him back, but Uduak either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Chinedu was bludgeoning one poor initiate, whose only defense was to hold his shield high enough to avoid being brained, and Yaw had already dropped a Chisomo man and was working on his second.

  A lanky Chisomo fighter faced off against Tau and poked at him with a sword, like he was trying to prod a fire to life. Tau batted the attack off target and smashed his shield into the man’s helmeted face, and he went down. Behind the felled swordsman was a tall Chisomo initiate with rheumy eyes. The initiate spared his defeated fellow a glance, snarled, came for Tau, and they crossed blades.

  Tau was adjusting to the heavier weight of bronze after so long with wood, but the man he fought was having a worse time. Tau’s opponent moved like he was wading in mud. He was slow, brutally slow, and trying to work his way through the intaka form, one of the first sword-fighting sequences Tau had learned as a boy.

  Tau avoided the form’s first and second sweeping attacks before crashing his sword into the man’s side. He followed that with a cuff to the nose, then plowed into rheumy eyes with his shield, knocking the initiate to the ground and taking him out of the skirmish.

  Two men came at Tau next, seeming more concerned with keeping out of each other’s way than getting to him. Tau cut high, expecting a block from the first. None came, so he clubbed the man in the helmet, sending him sprawling. The second man squealed a war cry and swung. Tau caught the blow on his shield, wrist pinging with pain, then used the shield to force the man’s sword low. With the shield out of the way, Tau came overhead with his sword. The blow connected and the squealer crumpled but didn’t go down. Tau hit him again. He went down.

  Tau looked up, watching for the next attacker. There was no one in front of him. He had, along with Uduak, Hadith, Yaw, and Chinedu, blasted through the Chisomo middle split. The fighting was behind them now. The left and right splits were heavily engaged with the rest of Scale Jayyed, and it was a mess. Scale Chisomo’s discipline had melted in the furnace of first contact.

  “Uduak, Tau, with me to the right split,” said Hadith. “Yaw, Chinedu, help against the left.”

  “Why?” asked Chinedu. “Why should I… listen to you?”

  “Let’s just win,” Tau told Chinedu, and he started toward the right.

  “Other right!” Hadith shouted. “The right, from when we were first facing them.”

  Tau stopped, shrugged, not quite sure what difference it made, but changed direction.

  “C’mon, then,” Yaw told Chinedu, leading him the other way.

  Fighting beside Uduak was a more pleasant experience than fighting against him. Tau knocked one more man out of the skirmish but saw Uduak blood one, almost break the leg of another, and charge a third to the ground. Then, having adapted to the momentum of the skirmish and getting over his awe at Uduak’s power, Tau sought his next opponent, only there wasn’t one.

  Scale Chisomo had been eliminated to a man. It took a moment, but, realizing they’d won, Scale Jayyed cheered, swords and shields raised high as bets were traded to the sounds of grumbling and curses all along the battlefield’s sidelines.

  Out of the fifty-four men they’d started with, Tau’s scale had thirty-two still standing. Yaw was a few strides away, his face bright with an ear-to-ear smile as he patted Chinedu on the back. Uduak and Hadith had survived too. Hadith was standing close to the big man, talking to him and pointing at details on the battlefield. Tau imagined he was already going over where they’d done things right and where they could have done better.

  Tau turned away, trying to remain grim, but couldn’t hold back the smile. It started small, then crept across his face until he was grinning like he’d been in the sun too long. He pumped his fist, the wrong fist, and almost fell over from the pain. Eyes watering from the hurt, his mood still didn’t sour. Jayyed’s five had made it through the skirmish and the contest had been won. His scale had won!

  Tau knew the rest of the day was his to do with as he saw fit. The surviving skirmishers of the winning scale were gifted that as a winner’s bounty, but he wouldn’t waste the time, not after Jayyed’s speech.

  “Well fought,” Jayyed said, addressing the scale. “But we took too many losses and I own much of the blame for that. I’ve paid too much attention to individual sparring, thinking fifty-four men with better training could ensure victory. It’s not so. If we are to be the best, we can’t be just better-trained men, better fighters. We have to be the better scale.

  “Chisomo had us on that front, though his initiates couldn’t make use of their advantage. Truth? I’m thankful they exposed our weakness. Now we can see it for what it is and burn it away. We’re going to learn how to work better together… tomorrow.

  “Survivors, you have your day. The men who did not survive—you fought hard and well. You should be proud. Still, you have more to do and I leave you in Aqondise Anan’s capable hands.”

  The men who fell in the skirmish couldn’t have looked less happy.

  “Think the mess hall serves masmas this early?” Hadith asked Tau and Uduak, drawing a smile from the big man.

  “Do have a thirst,” Uduak said.

  “Let’s gather Yaw and Chinedu, those slackards, and find out,” Hadith offered.

  “Going to spar with the rest for a bit,” Tau said. Uduak tilted his head at Tau, staring at him like he was an oddity, or an idiot. Hadith looked like he was going to say something, thought better of it, and walked away instead.

  “Uduak,” he called, “let’s ease that thirst.”

  Uduak waited a breath, still watching Tau. He grunted and strode off.

  “Out of the dirt,” Anan shouted to the men from Jayyed’s scale who had gone down in the skirmish. “You thought that was a beating. You’ve seen nothing. Run twice round the grounds and then we do some real fighting!”

  The men who didn’t have to be carried to the infirmary looked wearied and defiant, but they got up and they ran, and Tau went with them. He could feel Jayyed’s eyes on him.

  Let him watch, Tau thought, as Jayyed’s words came to mind: “The days without diffi
culty are the days you do not improve.”

  Tau ran harder. He was not the strongest, the quickest, or the most talented, not by any measure. He knew this and knew he could not control this. However, he could control his effort, the work he put in, and there he would not be beaten.

  He made a pact with himself, a pact he swore on his father’s soul. If he were asked to run a thousand strides, he would run two thousand. If he were told to spar three rounds, he would spar six. And if he fought a match to surrender, the man who surrendered would not be him. He would fight until he won or he died. There would be, he swore, no days without difficulty.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BATTLEGROUNDS

  Jayyed was true to his word. The scale trained teamwork and tactics, which were new to Tau, who found the concept of coordinating battle efforts complicated. It worked, though.

  Scale Jayyed fought two more skirmishes and won them. Tau survived both. So did Yaw, Chinedu, and Hadith. Uduak was “killed” in the second one, after men from Scale Thoko targeted him.

  In that battle, several of Thoko’s men swarmed Uduak, using the same strategy the hedeni did against an Enraged Ingonyama. Uduak made them pay. He fought like one of the mythical beasts from Osonte, dropping three of Scale Thoko’s men before going down. One of them had a cracked skull.

  Before Uduak fell, Tau tried to help. He forced his way to the big man’s side, and for a time, they fought back to back. Thoko’s men ignored Tau, thinking the scarred runt unworthy of their attention. Their minds changed after Tau battered two of them to the dirt. And they realized the full extent of their error when Yaw, Chinedu, and Hadith joined him, helping Scale Jayyed rampage through the Thoko ranks.