by Segoy Sands
Walder’s grandfather’s grandfather, Harwold, had seen the Grael fleet arrive, over fifty great twenty ton ships, each with three hundred fighting men and no end of arms, even war horses. Along the way, they’d left a settlement on Heron, a major Skårsan isle, whether by invitation or by invasion he didn’t know, and kept a few thousand soldiers stationed there, to build supplies and ready reinforcements if the Orroch proved stubborn. The Orroch were not ready for that; they were used to disorganized Skårsan raids, maybe a dozen longships from Skår, with maybe fifty men each. Those did plenty of damage, but the commotion was usually over in a week. Usually, the Skår got as good as they gave from the stubborn folk crazy enough to live on the coasts. So, though the Grael had long been there to the south, closer than Skår, the Orroch hadn’t imagined an invasion on such a scale. Bedes had come across Dauphan Strait, to try to spread the Aurum, but what were they but kindly, ineffectual scholars? The Grael themselves had always seemed too self-indulgent and effete to threaten Aina Livia, but when the Grael did come, spouting its promises of high civilization, it took two months to build a proper resistance. Then Harwold fell in the field, three arrows in him. Long-faced Roget came, with an escort of twenty armored knights, to deal the coup de grace to a guttering man on a dark and ignominious day.
They couldn’t truly take the north, those fuggers, nor the redlands of the Spiral. Couldn’t, or didn’t. They were after the rich southlands to spread their Aurums and fill their coffers. They were after the Rood, as a symbol, they said, of a new age of civilization and law, and so were the Blake and Guilders, he’d no doubt. They all wanted power, but they were careful about it. They wanted everyone to believe theirs was the noble cause, the cause of rights and freedoms, and to be on their side was to be on the right side.
That strategy didn’t altogether work. From the start, the whole length of the Tourmaline, with the land above and east of it, was hotly disputed. The Orroch never ran out of men willing to keep that border troubled, and eventually those men called themselves the Cora, though it took them half a century to spark the Sei Sí insurrection, with the fiercest battles fought along the Tourmaline River, in the dry country between the walled cities of Welen and Rune. Roget, of House Ganalon, had made the mistake of allowing the Duennes of House Alcieri to establish themselves as Lords of Rune and name themselves Sun King from the secure heights of the Cube. Roget’s grandson, Renard, sat in his summer palace in Bysshe and in his high seat in Ganalon, but finally had to answer the provocation. It was during the siege of Rune that the Cora ambushed Renard’s eldest son Ruard, which only put young Risard, Ruard’s son, in power.
Risard was young, but even then he was patient and crafty. His closest advisor was another young man, a local from Rune. Back then, people still called him Xander, not the Bootlicker. He counseled Risard to poison the water and hold siege until the Alcieri pretender and all his relations were nothing but bones. Two winters that had taken. When Risard finally rode into the Cube, he found only a single survivor, Los the Cannibal, who he kept as a pet. Renard named his grandson Risard the crown prince, and made the Bootlicker the Lord of Rune. It was the young Bootlicker in all his finery who had the temerity to meet with the Cora, over twenty five years ago now, to hammer out the Ten Rivers Truce that officially cracked Aina Livia in thirds: Ochre to the Orroch, Galloway to the Grael, and Siorsior to the Spiral.
Of course, the truce had not stopped Risard’s quiet efforts to find the last men in Harwold’s bloodline and have them killed. Cernach and Cladhar still wore heads because Risard couldn’t reach them in the Twin Castlean Isles, guests of Chieftain Ulfstar of the Cairdún Clan, whose father before him had kept the Grael out. In truth, it was the black cliffs of the Twins that stopped the Grael. High rock guards the twins, the saying went. For his part, Walder was just plain lucky. No one knew Cernach and Cladhar had a brother.
He spat again, less bitterly, walking the wooded path that ringed the klaast hold, a path of new-leafed saplings that always eased him. The trees were thick enough to slow the rain and the green gloom suited his mood. All those trees had sprouted and grown in the years he himself had lived, a time of occupation and defeat and politics. Those trees gave him hope. They were the land as he was the land. They helped him remember that life never stopped. The great world moved. The good road mattered. Laughter mattered.
Despite the rain, quick little salt-winged birds sang in the wet branches of alder, birch, deodar, and yew. Alert, dark-eyed, they thrilled with ásu, lifeforce, hopping from wild perch to wild perch amid the sharp new leaves. This had been farmland, maybe half a century ago, and the trees had come back in a confused tangle. The Nesso hadn’t driven the farmers off. They’d left themselves, out of prejudice. They couldn’t overcome their aversion to their new neighbors up on Tor Cael. Je would know that better than anyone, and it was his decision to build Aegle Klaast so close to Neserre. Some doubted him, but he chose right. It was a good place, and the Nesso were good neighbors. A good man to maccha for, Je. He had no quarrel with Je.
They were old friends, the three of them, Je and Hamlet and him. Every klaast had a Murphy, a Maccha, and a Maor, three trí men who won the right to start a klaast. It wasn’t an easy right to win. If you wanted to be a trí man, you had to be taught by a trí man, and best him eventually. If a trí took you as a student, he would have no greater hope than that you’d do just that. Je bested Aegle, Parusa klaast chief, and Aegle had smiled like he’d just become a father. The gray lean dog had been worried Je would shame him by losing. In his twenty years as a Murphy, Aegle had shut down the promise of at least a dozen good men. But then Je had come along, and some hated him right off for what he was, but Aegle had seen it. Walder had seen it, too, with his own eyes – the day that sparked a month of celebration – no, not the day, the moment, the second, when a counter of a counter of a counter led Je to bring down the best man in all the klaasts. Hamlet’s contest with Topol, the Maor, was different. Maor’s normally didn’t fight. A Maor’s role was to judge bouts and heal the injured. The Maor’s Sacrifice was given deep respect. There were only two occasions when they did fight: in the spirit battle, and in the sionsaigh, the apprentice challenge. Topol took a glancing scratch. Barely a scratch, but the day went to Hamlet.
Suddenly the birds were all warbling at once in the trees as the rain came shaking through the canopy to the needles below, muted and soft. Walder frowned.
A man who dwelled on the past defeated himself. It was bad luck, too, chewing the cud of an old victory. You would lose your edge, forget how easily it could have been defeat. Sgaard was easily as big as he was, and far more experienced. If he had Skårsan blood, he wasn’t the sort of man you asked about his past or his parentage. That man’s muscles knew what to do, the way water knows how to flow over a waterfall or the wind to stir the leaves. He would rather have stepped into the ring with the old stone of Oxbern. But Aegle had pinned him with those steel gray eyes and said Je would be needing a Maccha, and every man had to learn to die.
Walder had died in that match. The animal within emerged. Sgaard knew exactly how to beat it out into the open, how to time it, where and when to hit, so that his human mind dropped its leashes, its fetters, its controls. Hamlet and Je said it happened in heartbeats. One moment Sgaard was clearly dominant, landing strike after strike with cool casual precision, going in for the vital points, the death blow, and then, Walder was rippling like a wild thing, soft and fluid, even gentle. Ha! Was it victory when you were the one who limped away and ached over every inch of your skin for weeks? In the wildness, he could have killed Sgaard – would have killed him, had it been a battlefield. In the klaast, though – none knew why, maybe the mind stayed more sane than anyone guessed – the wildness usually meant a win so efficient and decisive no one was harmed. Back on his feet, shaking his dizzy head, Sgaard had smiled and squinted.
“See, lad, now that’s what I thought.”
He stopped in his tracks, remembering. There were ways to trigge
r the riastrad in a young blood, as he soon learned. Walder’s training only began the day he made Maccha. For months after that, Sgaard pushed him past his limits, teaching him Maccha lore, things sacred to him, things he’d never been permitted to teach before. They’d not fought again; they never would. Sgaard was his cho, his master, and Maccha weren’t ring fighters. They trained young bloods and prepared a handful to transition into the lucid wildness, the clear-minded berserker frenzy of the riastrad. Maccha were weapons, waiting for the Great Klaast.
He hadn’t beaten Sgaard. No. He’d only shown he was ready to learn. Sgaard, Aegle, and Topol - they made Je, Hamlet and him, quick as they could. Each trí of the other thirteen lodges did the same. It was hard to imagine any klaast trí being beaten, let alone all thirteen in the space of a year, but no one cared to bite the gold too hard. New klaasts had to be made. The High King had issued a proclamation:
The Orroch custom of schooling its young in the martial ways of hand combat constitutes the training up of a second militia within the King’s own land; who rears the pups of wolves and bears is a traitor in the eyes of the law. This archaic system is preserved by Orroch custom; no Grael has the general interest of learning it. Yet we have guests in this land, joint stewards of the great sea routes, the Nesso, who would give challenge. In clemency, I, Risard, High King of Aurland, suffer the klaast system to continue, so that henceforth the Nesso and Orroch may make friendly contest with each other, and grow to love each other well.
Risard assumed the Nesso would teach the Orroch a lesson. For three years, they did humiliate them, in klaast match after klaast match. When the Great Klaast came, in its thirteen year cycle, the Orroch were near despair.
Walder clenched his fists as rain trickled weakly down his face. He’d stepped out of the woods into a clearing under a mist-shrouded hill. Ghostly mist flowed like the world’s breath over the leaf-laden trees of the forest god. Risard was a fool to use a serpent like the Nesso. They would bite him yet, wrap their coils around him, and break his back. Yes, he remembered the Great Klaast, and ached when he thought of it. Like most of the younger men, he’d shamed his people. The Nesso Blakes knew arcane arts learned of the Ignis, with strange forms few were quick enough to comprehend and counter. It was hard to see where a strike was coming from, and they would use your own force against you like they felt your intent. Only one thing saved the Orroch, the riastrad. They’d not shown it to them until that day. Face to face with warrior-berserkers with bodies distorted and changed by battle-lust, they lost their stony composure. The trís had only managed to teach a handful of the new brood to quicken, and few, Walder included, had mastered it. In two matches, it happened for him almost of its own. But he lost his third match with Choden-Blake in seconds.
Sgaard defeated Misje-Blake, but paid five days later with his life, bleeding slowly from internal wounds. Aegle lost the sight of his eyes, in spite of Topol’s healing, such was the riastrad that gripped him in the match with Saldewa al jebre. An al jebre was a Blake who was demon-possessed by the one they called A’zi. They brought him in, a wiry man with crazy eyes, shaved head, skin crawling from crown to toe with moving numbers. There was a look in their slate-colored faces, a kind of dark humor, as if to say, You kept your weapons hidden, we kept ours. If Saldewa beat Aegle, the game was up. Everything centered on this one match.
All who saw it were shaken, and many did see - the usual tight huddle around the klaast pit broke open as men reeled back, afraid. The numbers swarming on Saldewa’s skin glowed ochre and umber, as did his eyes. He’d wanted to believe it was just a dye, some potent form of weld and madder, but he’d seen the bdud ascend, a dark mist, through his feet and into his form, so that he moved as no human could move, faster than a striking viper, no hesitation, no delay, attack hidden in defense and defense hidden in attack. He streaked toward Aegle, but already Aegle’s arms rippled and eyes bulged with the riastrad. Afterwards, men swore his hair was afire and a scorching heat came off him. Others swore he stood half again as tall as his normal stature. Some insisted he grew ram’s horns, and that his hands were iron hooves. A man could only live in the riastrad for a minute at most, but that day Aegle endured the torque for triple that and more, as the daemon fighter flowed like a dark brume. Walder was sure he had caught a clear glimpse of what Aegle became as the wildness gripped his form. A wild-eyed orange-hued boar. Aegle prevailed, pinning the arcanum to the ground. Yet the Orroch wept. They wept when they saw the blood pouring from Aegle’s eyes.
Now the Great Klaast was coming round again. Thirteen years. No one had forgotten Saldewa. No one dared voice their fear of Nesso al jebre. A soft mournful voice made Walder lift his eyes from the sodden ground. A peeling birch swayed back and forth in the wind, not three feet ahead of him. Perched in the fork of one of its branches and riding like a sailor in a crow’s nest, stood a great horned owl, three feet tall at least, its bright yellow eyes filled with fierce madness. Those eyes were the riastrad, wrathful, primeval, too terrible to accept. Oddly it swayed, as the branched rocked forward and back. Too terrible to accept. He stood in the wind and rain, under the gray clouds, facing the old owl for a long time, making himself look into that chaotic, inchoate gaze.
9 ESSGER
Maybe it was good that he was going to fight tonight, he thought, resting up in the bunk. Maybe getting hit hard a few times would knock him back to his senses. As it was, when he closed his eyes, he saw her face. Was it his imagination, or did she look a little sad as she closed the door? Was that all a viaisa’s illusion? She’d wanted him for the amulet, he thought. How soon had she noticed it? She said she could sense something from it, and something about numbers, or about the druk. Or had he dreamed that? Lorca had never said the amulet was special, but La'mo had known. Because she was a viaisa. Her face floated up into his eyes, the high cheekbones, almond eyes, the line of three moles, the bold tinkle of laughter he’d never heard in the voice of any other girl. A viaisa? No, she was too young, too simple, too open hearted. Could that be feigned?
It would be good to hit someone, and be hit back. Face things head on. That’s what he’d do. He wouldn’t waste time wondering. He’d go, see her in person, get the truth. It felt good to resolve that, even if that’s exactly what she’d maneuvered him into resolving. Even then. Because she might turn out to be innocent. Did she use that laugh on every man? It would be really good to hit someone.
He’d said to come back, too, the shopkeeper. He’d said they’d talk with La'mo. Why? What had they done to him? That thing with A’zi and the ciphers, what was that? Zodo had a furtive look. So did the shopkeeper, Kunnok. And then that smoke had made him hallucinate. If not, had he really experienced an Arru demon? Was he really marked? People talked about old Nesso sorcery, but going to Nesso Town couldn’t have got him into that much of a mess all at once. If it was like that, no one would go there, and bunders went all the time. Hog and Bu had been there before. A grown man, he was sure, could walk into Neserre and walk out, unchanged. The lesson was, he couldn’t allow himself to be thrown off balance so easily, not in public places, and not in the ring tonight. He had to be a man.
“Wake up, pretty boy,” Bu said, hanging by the legs from the bunk above, lyme-locks swinging like willow branches around his flushed upside down face. “Time’s up.”
“Bu,” Dillan sat up. “What do I absolutely need to know? What’s the one totally crucial thing?”
“Well, first off,” he said, eyes swimming up out of his forehead like two preternatural fish, “breathe a big sigh of relief. The one totally crucial thing is already cool. You won’t be fighting me. Thank nghnuchan Essger for that. This meet’s with Darad. Bhean Sheehan’s their Murphy, Merton’s their Maccha. We tend to kick their asses, so the worst you can do is embarrass us. No big deal. The main thing you need to know is that this is what’s called a bhuachtain, not a proper klaast but a friendly match between bunds. There’s eleven of these in a good year. You can only make a greenhorn challenge at a bhuach
tain, and only in the first rounds, until one challenger goes to three undefeated. Then the slag rounds start. You’ll be up against greenies, but if you’re still on your feet after three rounds, you’ll go against slag. If you happen to beat three slags, then you go against ore. Don’t worry. You won’t.”
Hog was sitting in the other bunk, tying on his boots. “Longer you stand, more damage you’ll take. We’re just slag ourselves, mind you. Upper level slag, third round sort of stuff, and we’ll likely be coming up against ore soon, and then it’s the luck of the draw, because some we stand a chance against and most we don’t. The higher you rise, the more likely an ingot’s showing you the choicer moves. Maybe even an iron. Out of luck if the slag you fight, or the ore, turns out to have an older brother who’s an iron.”
“But didn’t your da teach you anything special?” Bu asked, big blue veins pulsing in his forehead from being upside down so long. “Or your crazy ass brother?”
“Gentle Dill?” Hog scoffed. “He showed us everything he had in Frye’s ring, Bu, and that wasn’t much. He’s been too busy slaving for Cogan. The Redwolf thrown him into the world and told him to find his way into the bund, right?” He finished tying his boots on and stood up, flexing his back and arms in his creased leather cuirass, cracking his neck to the right and left, and doing some deep lunges. “Anyway, just remember, win three tonight and you’re in the bund. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t happen. Bu had to walk across half Aina Livia to get himself battered. What was it, three, four bhuachtains?”
