by Evan Winter
So, it was to be genocide instead of peace, thought Tau. He placed his hands on the hilts of his swords, their presence comforting him. Peace. It had been a short but pleasant dream. Time to wake up.
“You,” said a full-blooded Indlovu to Jayyed. “Take your scale and join up over there.” He pointed to a mass of men, Indlovu and Ihashe. “We’re forming several claws to head up the Fist. We’ll push the hedeni back.”
“Nkosi, what are the Edifiers saying?” asked Jayyed.
Talk of Gifted brought Tau’s mind to Zuri. He scanned the crowd of people, seeing Gifted among the Indlovu. He did not see Zuri, but spotting her among the hundreds would be no simple task. He did not see Kellan or the rest of his scale either. Zuri might already be with him and Kellan might be headed for a fight. That worried him.
“The Edifiers have nothing good to say,” said the Indlovu. “The hedeni are coming over the mountains in the North, the South, and they’re attacking through the Wrist.”
“They’re really doing this? Invading?” said Jayyed. He sounded bewildered, and Tau understood. Jayyed knew how close they had come to peace. The Noble, however, read Jayyed’s tone as fearful.
“Hedeni!” the Noble said. “You’d think two hundred cycles of facing us would have taught them. Well, tonight we’ll make the lesson take hold!”
It was meant to be the bold and aggressive talk that builds men’s spirits, putting them in a fighting mood. Scale Jayyed did not react. The night’s occurrences were too odd and it was too soon after the schism that the day’s skirmish had caused between the castes.
The Indlovu glowered at them, wanting to say something derogatory about their bravery or character. To his credit, he held back. War was upon them and he must have been aware that many of the men in front of him wouldn’t see the dawn.
“I’m with this wing,” he muttered. “It has a full complement of men and will hold the Crags. You need to find your place in the wing over there. Goddess go with you. I mean that. They’re putting a Royal Noble, fresh from Palm City, in charge of that lot and they’re going into the Fist to meet the hedeni head on.”
Jayyed pointed to a wing of full-bloods who were already geared up and about to march. “What about them?”
“Them? They’re for the city. They’ll keep our people safe if the hedeni break out of the mountains. ”
Jayyed’s eyes narrowed. “That so?”
“It is. Move out!”
Tau took stock of the defensive wing. It didn’t take long to spot what had thrown Jayyed. The Omehi military was as caste oriented as the rest of Omehi culture, but all war groups tended to have a mix of Lessers and Nobles, and Tau did not see a single Lesser in the defensive wing.
“You heard. March!” shouted Anan, giving Tau no more time to consider it.
“Who are you, then?” the tall inkokeli of their new wing asked when Jayyed strode up, scale in tow.
“Jayyed with Scale Jayyed.”
The inkokeli was young, thought Tau, and pretty enough to be the type more familiar doing battle amid a woman’s skirts than in a skirmish. Tau could tell he’d recognized Jayyed’s name, though, and Tau hoped that would mean he’d recognize the umqondisi’s experience as well.
“You’re Jayyed Ayim, former adviser to the Guardian Council?”
“I am.”
“With your scale too? Yes, yes, it is. I see the Common of Kerem. The scar gives him away. Very good. Glad to have you here. We’re going up into the Fist. Could be a half-decent fight.”
“Could be,” said Jayyed.
“Yes, yes. I’m Inkokeli Oluchi. We’re breaking the wing into three claws. We’ll climb the Fist in a prong formation. There are flatlands up there. If we move fast, if we stay in time with one another, and if we catch the hedeni on the flats, we can pincer them there and crush them.”
“Lot of ‘ifs,’” whispered Hadith.
“Jayyed, you and your men are with me and my Indlovu. We’ll form the center prong. We have a Gifted assigned to us as well.” Tau listened close. “She’s good. An Enervator with experience. Seen combat in the Wrist.”
Tau exhaled. It wasn’t Zuri. Almost as bad, the inkokeli of their wing was less than new. He had to be fresh from one of the Royal Noble academies in Palm. He’d probably never seen live combat, even in a skirmish.
“This is it!” Oluchi said, walking up a small rise so he could be seen by the whole wing, unknowingly continuing where the other Indlovu’s speech had ended. “We are Omehi, the Goddess’s Chosen. What we do this night will shake the halls of history. We go to meet the faithless hedeni, and where we find them, we fell them. Where they find us, they find death! Follow me! Follow me to victory and glory!”
Oluchi turned toward the Fist and went. The wing went with him and, for a full span, the only sound was men’s feet falling in concert.
“Not bad,” said Uduak.
“What?” asked Hadith.
“Speech,” Uduak said.
Tau had been lost in thought, but Uduak’s remark had to be commented on. “That was over a span ago.”
“Not bad,” the big man repeated.
“He’s going to get us killed,” said Yaw.
“Not me,” said Hadith. “I didn’t come all this way to die under some blue blood just days off Palm’s teat.”
“Quiet, there,” said Anan. He was coming up from the rear of the scale and moved past them to march alongside Jayyed. The men hushed, Chinedu coughed, and Scale Jayyed marched to war, to fight, to kill, to die. And Tau realized he couldn’t keep up with his emotions. Just spans ago nothing had been more important than the melee, than facing Kellan Okar, and now—
“Swords out!” screeched their inkokeli, his cry chased by the sound of an entire claw, one hundred and sixty-two men, clearing bronze from scabbards.
“I’m Omehi! I’m Omehi!” said a voice from up ahead.
“What is it?” said Tau. He was too close to the middle of the column.
Uduak, tallest among the Lessers, told him. “Indlovu. Bleeding. A lot.”
“What’s going on?” demanded Oluchi. “Who are you?”
“I’m Scale Osa, under Kellan Okar. We were with Inkokeli Odihambo’s wing. We were with Prince Xolani.”
“The prince? Where?” asked Oluchi.
“Ambush. The hedeni must have a dragon’s worth of fighters. Odihambo’s dead.… Half the wing is dead. You have to help!”
ROUT
“You have to come now,” the injured Indlovu from Scale Osa begged. “They’re dying, all of them. The wing is torn to pieces. Only Scale Osa held. Inkokeli Okar was enraged by his Gifted and fought, but it won’t be enough.”
Tau, who’d begun pushing his way through the column when he heard Scale Osa was involved, was near the front. “Kellan,” Tau said, “he’s your inkokeli? What did the Gifted who enraged him look like?”
Jayyed was beside Tau. “Stand down,” he hissed.
“Who the char and…,” started Oluchi. “Oh, the Common of Kerem.”
The bloodied Indlovu from Osa showed no surprise at that. He was in shock. “You have to come. My scale… the prince, they die if you don’t.”
Tau turned to Jayyed, desperate.
Jayyed nodded, his mouth a grim line. “With respect, Inkokeli Oluchi, it is our duty to aid our prince.”
“Yes, yes! The prince is in danger. Hurry now, men. We go to kill slough-skins! You, there,” Oluchi said, pointing to a full-blooded Indlovu. “Pick six men. Three run to the claw south of us and three to the claw that’s north. Tell them to abandon the march to the flats. They have new orders. They will join us in turning back the hedeni that slew our Noble brother Odihambo.”
Oluchi reached into his belt and handed the man two wax seals with the Oluchi family name pressed into them. “Go now.” Oluchi turned to the wing. “We’ve marched for long enough. Now we run. We run to the defense of our queendom and our prince!”
The bloodied Indlovu from Osa led the way, and the wing ran, r
acing over uneven ground in the dark, racing to save their brothers from being cut down by the treacherous savages, the faithless hedeni. They did not go far before running headlong into the remnants of Wing Odihambo, in full retreat.
“Inkokeli,” called Jayyed. “We can hold here. We can form ranks and use this rise as cover.” Jayyed pointed to the incline that faced them. They were approaching a large gully that erosion, time, and an ancient and dried flow of water had cut into the mountainside.
Jayyed explained his strategy. “When the hedeni come over it, we’ll be waiting to turn the tide.”
Tau had no intention of waiting. Zuri could be over that rise. She could be fighting for her life. He would not wait.
“No, Jayyed,” said Oluchi. “Our prince could be over there. We take the fight to the hedeni. They will crumble against us!” Oluchi waved the wing onward. “Up and over, men! We’ll slake our swords’ thirst on hedeni blood.”
Oluchi and his scale charged the hill.
“Burn his tongue,” cursed Jayyed, ordering his scale to follow.
The Indlovu, taller and longer-legged, topped the rise before Scale Jayyed. By the time Tau crested it, there were already close to two thousand women and men fighting and dying on the path that ran through the shallow gully.
Some of Scale Oluchi had run down to the fighting. The men who did that had gone past their inkokeli, who stood staring.
“Goddess wept,” Oluchi said. “What is this?”
The battle was a mess. There were no lines of combat, no true distinction between Xiddeen and Omehi. The gully was a hundred pockets of smaller skirmishes, and in each of them, an outnumbered group of Omehi was in the process of being surrounded and cut down.
“Lost,” growled Uduak beside Tau. “Already lost.”
Tau wasn’t listening. He was scanning the tumult for any sign of Zuri, feeling hopeless. He didn’t see her. He’d have no chance of finding her.
“There,” Uduak said, pointing near the middle of the gully. A group of twenty Indlovu had their backs pressed to a boulder and were being harried by a much larger Xiddeen force.
Tau looked. He didn’t see Zuri but understood why Uduak had called for his attention. Relief flooded him. Zuri was there. She was alive. She had to be. Who else could be keeping Kellan Okar enraged?
“Okar fights there,” Tau yelled to Jayyed.
Jayyed saw the situation for what it was. “He’s trying to hold the center of the gully, give the remains of the wing time to retreat. He’ll die there.”
“He stays alive long enough and he saves most of the men in the gully,” said Hadith. “They’re holding the shortest path. The hedeni need to get past Okar’s line to finish the wing.”
“He won’t hold long enough, and going down there to help kills us as well as him,” countered Jayyed. “Look.”
Jayyed pointed to the gully’s opposite side. A massive force of Xiddeen warriors was gathering on its ridge, preparing to run down and into the gully. Many of the hedeni were mounted on creatures Tau couldn’t understand.
They rode lizards as tall as a Lesser’s shoulders that, from muzzled head to barbed tail’s end, were the length of two men. The creatures flicked their tongues at the air, smelling blood in the night, and their eyes glowed, reflecting what little light there was. The Xiddeen riding the beasts held spears that were much longer than the ones they used in hand-to-hand combat. Tau glanced to Hadith and Uduak to see if his friends saw them too.
“Big lizards,” said Uduak.
“The hedeni in the gully are the vanguard,” Jayyed said, ignoring the creatures’ presence. “The rest of the army is still gathering.” He pointed to the Xiddeen on the far ridge. “They’ve seen our claw. They’re waiting. When we commit, so will they. When they join the fight, it turns from bloodbath to massacre.”
A massacre. Zuri. Tau knew he should think about it more, but there was no time. He ran into the gully.
“Tau!” Jayyed shouted.
Twenty strides were all it took for Tau to be in the thick of the battle. A Xiddian holding a spear stabbed at him. Tau batted the clumsy strike away and thrust his razor-sharp bronze through the man’s chest. The man gasped as the life drained from his eyes. Tau yanked his blade free, felt his bile rise, swallowed it down, and ran on.
He was accosted by two more hedeni. One held a purloined sword and the other was a woman who had lost her spear. Her only weapon was a dagger. She saw Tau coming; he tried to go around her; she gave a cry and lunged. She was dead before she hit the ground.
Her companion, the one holding the stolen sword, swung it like a child. Tau’s counter ripped out his throat, and as Tau ran past, the dying savage scrabbled at his neck, his fingers too few to staunch the red river.
Tau took two more steps, and two more Xiddians died. Not wanting to be slowed, he curved around a swathe of slaughter, Omehi men dying to a crush of hedeni and their spears. And then, by the Goddess, there she was, Zuri.
She was a hundred strides away, her back flat against a boulder some avalanche had deposited at the bottom of the gully eons ago. Kellan’s group had gotten lucky. The fallen rock gave them a wall to which they could put their backs, and that saved their lives in two ways. It prevented the Xiddeen from encircling them and it allowed Zuri the protection she needed to enrage Kellan.
Fully enraged, Kellan stood head and shoulders taller than Uduak and must have outweighed Tau three times over. His sword dripped with gore and he roared with every swing, his blade coursing with equal ease through the air and through the bodies of all who faced him.
Not to be outdone, Kellan’s men played their part in the carnage. They held the line against the Xiddeen advance, dancing in and out of the fray, supporting their enraged inkokeli by ensuring the Xiddeen could not mass in enough numbers to overwhelm him.
Tau had grudging respect for the Indlovu’s bravery and tactics, but their efforts wouldn’t change the outcome. The citadel warriors were outnumbered, and with every breath, more hedeni boiled into the gully. The lizard riders were coming, skittering down the ridge on the backs of their fiends.
The Xiddeen, it seemed, had thinkers as clever as Hadith. They had not tracked straight from the ocean to Citadel City. They had gone the long way round the Fist, bypassing the plateau where Oluchi had hoped to engage them.
It was poor fortune. Given the prince’s presence, Wing Odihambo had hoped to serve as a rear guard to Wing Oluchi. They were not prepared for a fight like this. Tau moved closer, ready to fight his way past more Xiddeen and into the lines of the embattled Indlovu.
“Tau!”
He whirled and saw a furious Jayyed. Anan, Uduak, Hadith, Yaw, Chinedu, Themba, and all the men of Scale Jayyed were behind him.
“Jayyed.”
“Nceku! What do you think you’re doing?”
“I have to get Zuri,” he said, pointing to her.
Jayyed saw her and the anger fell from his face. It took Tau a breath, but he understood. Zuri wasn’t much younger than Jayyed’s daughter.
“Get her and we leave,” said Jayyed. He ordered his men into a fighting formation. “We’ll push through, bolster the Indlovu lines, but can’t stay. The gully is lost. That’s already determined. What isn’t yet determined is how many of us need to die in it.”
Tau nodded and pushed on, not waiting to see if Scale Jayyed followed. He killed a hedena, got to the Indlovu line, blocked the overzealous thrust of a terrified citadel initiate, shouted that he was on the half-wit’s side, and made his way into the ranks of Scale Osa.
Zuri saw him, and through the drain of maintaining Kellan’s enraging, he saw her surprise. Tau tried to smile, to reassure her. She did not look reassured.
Kellan and his red-stained sword flashed past Tau’s line of sight. Okar was doing as well as was possible given the circumstances. He was also taking hits that would have disabled or killed a normal man.
The enraging protected him, but there was a cost. Every blow Kellan took weakened the flow o
f energy coursing through him, and Zuri had to reinforce that energy by drawing more from Isihogo. The more energy she took in, the harder it would be for her to maintain her shroud. Already, she was rocking on her feet, her face wan, her eyes dazed. She couldn’t continue for much longer.
Tau had to get Zuri out, and the only sure way to do it was to make Kellan call a retreat. The gully was filled with Xiddeen, and Scale Jayyed didn’t have enough men to escape the battlefield without help. Tau needed these Indlovu, and they would listen only to Okar. Tau looked for the clearest path to Okar’s side and took it.
Wing Odihambo had not expected a fight, and the fight they’d found was with the entirety of the Xiddeen invading force. From its outset, the gully battle had been a lost cause. Tau knew this, as he knew the Xiddian in front of him would feint high and stab for his chest. He knew it with the same certainty he had when he leaned away from the thrust that the fighter had not yet thrown. And when the spear was thrust, Tau punched his sword up and through the hedena’s armpit, into his heart, killing him.
Kellan was close, but a Xiddian threw herself in Tau’s way. It was a warrior woman with full lips, caramel skin, and astonishing green eyes. She moved like an ocean storm, her bladework brilliant. He took her hand off at the wrist and she gawped at him, as if to ask why he’d done it. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t sure, but his bronze was hilt deep in her breastbone and there nothing to say that would have meant a damn.
“You!” Okar bellowed at Tau.
Tau wasted no time. “The battle is lost. Call a retreat.”
Okar stove in a Xiddian’s skull with the edge of his shield. “No.”
“We can’t hold.”
“They killed him,” Okar said, teeth clenched, his sword wheeling this way, then that, demanding that those who opposed him either leap back or die.
“Who?”
“The prince!”
“Prince Xolani?” Tau said, unable to imagine Omehi royalty being killed in battle. It made no sense.
Okar grimaced at the name like the failure was his. “He’s dead.”
