by Logan Jacobs
“It is,” Kiki said. “No, this is different. Partly because it’s Yuri, who is one of the men Danazar relies on most, and a proud man, and now he will need to be helped with everything. But mostly because we have never managed to capture any of them alive before. We have always been in Pyralis’ power and now, these two followers of his are in Danazar’s power. That is… new, and I think it is affecting him.”
“It is new, but it was always inevitable,” Zembo said. “Fire burns itself out, eventually. Water keeps flowing until it erodes mountains.”
“Fire only burns itself out once it runs out of fuel,” Florenia pointed out, “and it sounds to me as if you are the fuel in this situation.”
“This is your chance to stop being the fuel,” Lizzy agreed. “But first you gotta make those two talk so you can find the others. If Danazar can’t do it, I can. I got plenty of ways I learnt with some of my old crews, some of the nastier ones.”
“I don’t know about that,” Ilandere said. “What if the scouts from our caravan had gotten captured? How would you want Sharman’s caravan to treat them? You wouldn’t want them to get tortured, would you?”
“No, but that’s still what would happen,” Zembo said, “whether or not we torture these two. Pyralis does not hold them to any code of mercy. They terrorize all the caravans that pass through this desert, but especially those faithful to Shoragua.”
“But someone has to stop the cycle of violence,” Ilandere protested.
Zembo shrugged. “Fire and water are elementally opposed. It is the way of the world, and always will be. We just have to play our part.”
“There has to be a better way,” Ilandere insisted with uncharacteristic confidence. Usually when she ventured some kind of suggestion and someone else dismissed it, the timid little centaur quickly fell quiet again. “There are a lot of things that I never used to think were possible,” she said with a shy glance in my direction, “and if they can come true, then I know it must also be possible to arrange a peaceful resolution to your conflict with the Pyralian caravans.”
“They have burnt our children alive,” Kiki said flatly. “So if Sharman’s caravan figures out where we are before we figure out where they are, you’re about to get a rude awakening from your dreamland, little horse.”
“Move out!” Danazar yelled, and the caravan quickly packed up and started trudging onward again.
The landscape of shimmering dunes had been mesmerizing and exciting for a while, but at this point even that was starting to look monotonous. Instead of being a majestic design of nature, a slope at this point just looked like an incline that was going to force us to work harder. Regardless of their elemental fight that we might have gotten ourselves dragged into, I now recognized that without Danazar and his caravan, my companions and I could never have found our way across the desert. We would have wandered until we died of thirst. It was lucky indeed for us all that Willobee had such an irrepressible penchant for cheating at games of chance.
Three more caravan members collapsed from heat exhaustion before we reached our camp site for that night. Most of those that collapsed revived eventually with water and rest, but two went into seizures and stopped breathing. The caravan paused only long enough to bury them beneath a dune. We continued to change up our pace a little so as not to disturb the sandworms, but still, Danazar continued to set an unusually aggressive pace apparently motivated by his desire to gain distance from Sharman’s caravan of Pyralians.
My friends and I all started walking at first, to spare Generosity, Virility, Fury, Slayer, and Chivalry, who were not bred for desert conditions as the camels were, and then when the women could not walk anymore they took turns on some of the merchants’ camels. There weren’t nearly enough camels for everyone to ride, but the caravan members switched off among each other and favored the weak and the old.
When the caravan finally stopped to settle down in the shadow of a dune, there was far less talk than usual. Everyone felt a bit numb and hollow at that point. But the desert itself had grown mystically beautiful in the darkness. The sky was studded with stars, and our shadows stretched across the dunes. There was a kind of silent solace in the desert’s serene indifference to human and humanoid problems.
After the canopies had been set up and the camels and horses tended to, the caravan gathered together in the sand, some of them holding torches to illuminate the circle, and a cup of honey mead in every hand. Even the children of the caravan were regularly given the drink although theirs was diluted with water.
Then Panjo, the yellow-bearded man with the earrings that I had first seen perform this ceremony in The Coconut Oasis, raised his mug and yelled, “To Neeremi, the old bat!”
“May her mangoes always be ripe,” a woman yelled back.
“May her bunions never pinch again,” Kiki suggested.
Other caravan members called out other details that started to provide a picture of Neeremi’s habits and quirks in life. Every time, the merchants drank to the wish.
After a few minutes of that, Panjo yelled out, “To Gilnu!”
“May he bed a new lass each day!”
“May his feet always stay dry!”
“What a peculiar way of honoring one’s dead,” Florenia remarked to me. “Funerals were always a solemn affair, with my people. They would lie in state tended by priests. And most people wanted to approve their sarcophagi long before death, to make sure the likenesses were flattering ones.”
Lizzy tipped her head back and drained the rest of her mug. “I dunno, this is pretty much how my crews done it,” she said.
“What were centaur funeral ceremonies like?” I asked Ilandere to include her in the conversation.
“We had pyres,” she answered. “We would burn our dead and return their ashes to the earth.”
“Not with my teacher, Chiron,” Elodette said softly. “All of his smoke rose into the sky, every speck of him. There were no ashes left to scatter. I believe he turned into stars himself, to continue to illuminate the world.”
The stern gray-eyed brunette had a faraway look in her eyes.
“And you, Vander?” Ilandere asked. “At the temple?”
“Uh, it was, more like what Florenia said,” I answered. “I mean, not as grand as with nobles, but when some older priests and vestals would die, we would honor them with solemn ceremonies, and rites to ensure that they passed into the Fairlands under the protection of Qaar’endoth.”
There had been no ceremony for the entire order after Thorvinius attacked and left none alive but me. I had not even stayed to bury the hundreds of bodies. More than that, since many had fought with both of their bodies, and still been overcome. It would have taken me days, and in the heat of my rage, all I could think of was pursuing the Thorvinians with the Sword of Saint Polliver and cutting them all down. But now that we were on Thorvinius’ path, and I had found all these new friends who needed me to take care of them, my mindset was more strategic. I was still going to destroy The Devourer as he had destroyed the first part of my life. But now I had a new life to fight for, temples to build, perhaps in the future, peoples to govern. Revenge was still my primary goal, but it was no longer my only consideration.
“That’s beautiful,” Ilandere said. “Centaurs do not really have a concept of an afterlife, not the way a lot of humans do anyway. Even if your parts are made into stars, your consciousness still wouldn’t exist anymore. You wouldn’t know it. But I hope that the Fairlands are real, if that means that I could be with you forever, Vander.”
“I hope so too, but I have no way to know for sure,” I said. “I do know that we’ll be together forever in this life, though.” I kissed her on the cheek, and she clung to my arm.
The caravan continued to drink through dinner, and even if the night was far from carefree, it was still rowdy and full of laughter in a bittersweet way.
Then after the meal, the caravan congregated around a square patch of sand about eight feet by eight feet. The same musicians
from the night before set up their drums, pipe, tambourines and castanets, but it looked like the caravan was preparing for a very different type of entertainment.
About a dozen of the fittest men handed off their mugs of honey mead and started removing their sandals and tops.
“Er, guys, don’t you think this is a lovely night for a few rounds of Sandmaster?” suggested Willobee, who certainly wasn’t about to participate in any kind of sparring exercise. But I was quite interested to see what the merchants’ fighting style might look like.
Two men picked up light sticks of about four feet in length that looked like they were made out of some kind of bamboo or rattan and stepped into the square.
At first, they just circled each other and lazily tapped their sticks together jovially, almost as if they were dancing. Han piped a playful tune to accompany them while the audience started up a hand clap.
Then, the drums pounded out a beat while the sparring match started in earnest.
From what I could tell, the two men were not aiming their sticks at each other’s heads, but everything below the neck was fair game. Sometimes what they were doing resembled a straightforward sword duel as they clashed the sticks together, lunged, and parried, but then suddenly it didn’t as one of them would grab both ends of his stick and use it as a bar so that he had more control when using it to block, or as one of them planted his stick in the ground and used it to catapult his body upside down in a sort of demi backflip which culminated in planting his foot squarely in the center of his opponent’s chest. Feet seemed to be fair game, although they avoided using them in ways that might cause serious injury, like potentially shin-shattering kicks. Hands seemed to be fair game too, but open hands only, to shove each other or gain control of the opponent’s stick. There was no punching and no elbows or knees. I watched carefully to memorize the evident rules of their game.
After one of the men fell on his back in the sand, and the other climbed on top and mimed stabbing him in the throat with the end of his stick, the drums pounded out a triumphant crescendo and cheers rose up from the audience. The victor pulled his defeated opponent back to his feet and the two of them shook hands and slapped each other on the backs before exiting the square.
“Hey, can I try?” I asked.
The caravan looked at me with some interest, but also some consternation.
“But you don’t know how,” Kiki said. “This discipline, I mean. Tatatba.”
“Well, how about you just tell me the rules real quick?” I asked. “I can see that there’s no punching allowed, no head strikes, no elbows or knees. Obviously no blows that are meant to cause real damage. Anything else I should be aware of?”
She looked at me and narrowed her bright brown eyes. “No adding or subtracting bodies while in the square.”
I laughed. “Deal.”
“You can’t strike with the end of the stick, only the length,” Zembo added, which I was encouraged by since it sounded like they were willing to let me participate. “And if you lose hold of your stick, you’re shit out of luck.”
“Well, who wants to show our honored guest some… hospitality?” Danazar asked with amusement as he spread his arms wide in a gesture to encompass the whole caravan.
“I will,” Khan offered as he grinned at me.
The caravan cheered with enthusiasm at the prospect of this match. Khan was a big guy, and I realized when he removed his shirt that he was also even more muscular than I thought. His tattoos snaked all around his arms, torso, and even up his neck and onto the side of his face in continuous snaking patterns composed of densely clustered dots.
“Get him, Vander,” Lizzy said as she pecked me on the cheek.
My nearest self removed my leather tunic and stepped into the square. Someone handed me one of the lightweight sticks, and Khan the other.
At first, we just circled each other calmly and clanked sticks like the first two fighters had done, while Han piped out a suspenseful tune. The stick felt hollow. It must have been tougher than it looked, to withstand all those blows without ever cracking, but I supposed it was intentionally lightweight so that the merchants could hit each other without breaking each other’s bones.
Then the drums started and Khan asked me, “Ready?”
“Yup,” I replied.
He swung at my shoulder, and I ducked and swung back at his stomach, but by the time my stick connected he had already managed to get his in a vertical position in front of his body, so the wood only hit wood.
I swung from the other direction and Khan knocked my stick aside before coming in with a side blow that bruised my ribs. I grabbed my stick at both ends and rammed him in the midsection which caused him to stagger back a few steps, but he managed not to fall.
Lizzy and Florenia were clutching my two selves that weren’t in the square with Khan. Each time I landed a blow, they patted me and stroked my hair or face excitedly. Each time Khan landed a blow, they squealed and dug their nails into me anxiously. Claws, in Lizzy’s case. I had to grab her hands and hold them in my lap to stop her.
Then, I raised my stick high in both hands as if I were planning to swing it like an axe. Khan took the bait and cracked me in the unprotected side. As soon as his stick connected, I dropped that arm and clamped it down over Khan’s stick, with my elbow bent, and my fist pressed against my chest. Then I twisted hard to the inside, against Khan’s thumb, to flip the stick out of his grasp. I raised both sticks in the air as the crowd went wild.
Khan chuckled. “You got me good. Another round?”
The other merchants’ roars of enthusiasm answered the invitation before I could. The second round, Khan managed to knock me on my back by getting his stick behind one of my knees and yanking it toward himself with both hands at an upward angle. The third round, I kept trading blows with him until I got an opening to return the favor with the exact same maneuver.
We would have happily kept going, but by then some caravan youths were clamoring for a turn, so we relinquished the sticks and shook hands.
“Middle age is catching up to me,” Khan groaned. He was being a good sport about it, but I think he felt a little embarrassed. “In my youth, I would have squished you like a fly!”
Khan was only somewhere around thirty and clearly in his physical prime.
I grinned. “No doubt about it.”
When we bedded down for the night the interiors of the tents were a lot quieter than the previous night. Some couples still ground quietly against each other in corners, but there was none of the same wild excess, and a lot of people just wanted to sleep or lie awake with their worries.
Each of my selves held one of my three consorts. Ilandere snuggled against me with an air of deep contentment, but Lizzy tossed and turned and twitched in my arms.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“I just wanna be a… you know, the other thing,” she said. “Been so long since I got anything in my teeth.”
“Well, you might get your chance soon, if this Sharman guy shows up,” I said. Otherwise, though, I felt like the caravan was already under a lot of stress and some things were just easier not to have to explain to them. If we were facing a normal enemy, then they might see Lizzy’s wolf morphing abilities as an asset, and be reassured to learn about them. But if the Pyralians’ primary weapon was fire, then there was no obvious advantage to turning into a giant, toothy, slightly stinky wolf that was just as flammable as your average human. It would probably just be a little… unnerving to people who weren’t familiar with Lizzy.
After a few hours of trying in vain to fall asleep, I thought I heard a faint scream in the distance. It was quickly muffled, and I thought maybe I was just imagining things, but then a few minutes later I heard a similar sound again. And something that sounded like splashing.
Of the women in my party, Lizzy was the deepest sleeper, once she fell asleep anyway. She had a lot of restless energy and liked to roam around at night as a wolf, so she was also the most nocturnal.
But once she was out, she was out, just like the gnome. So that was the self that I chose to disentangle carefully before I crept over to a side of the tent and snuck out onto the chilled sands.
I followed the faint sounds over a few dunes. When I could hear that I was almost to the source, I dropped down on my belly, crawled up to the crest of a dune, and peered over. What I saw was a tent exactly like the ones that the rest of the caravan was sleeping in.
I went over to the tent, found an unsecured side, and peeked in.
Danazar was there, along with Khan and two other merchants I recognized but didn’t know by name, both of them large and heavily tattooed. The two Pyralian captives were also there. One of them was currently having his head held underneath the surface of a large tub of water. The other was lying in a soggy heap on the floor in a medically questionable state.
I threw the tent flap open and walked in. The four caravan members all stared at me and half of their hands went to their weapons. After a moment of complete silence the Pyralian with his head underwater made a frantic gurgling sound. The merchant who was holding him under hesitated for another second, then jerked him out, keeping his hand wrapped in the captive’s hair. The captive coughed and gasped for breath and retched up water. He stared at me wildly too but I didn’t know if he really processed the sight of me or thought anything of my arrival.
“What are you doing here?” Danazar demanded finally. He had been extremely friendly towards me from the beginning, but especially ever since Amneli’s rescue, but his tone just then strongly indicated that I was not welcome in that tent.
“Taking a bit of a nighttime stroll,” I said cheerily.
No one smiled, laughed, or replied.
“I heard sounds, so I came to investigate,” I said. “Look. I don’t think this is the right way to go about things. These are prisoners. I don’t care what you do to Sharman’s guys in a fight. You should fuck them up as badly as you can. But when you’ve got them just two on their own tied up like this? That’s different.”
