Harrac crouched, wary, eyes on the straight iron sword now laid across Snaga’s lap. “You don’t have an axe.” All Broken Bowl’s cattle and cowrie shells might buy him an iron sword, but not one so long or heavy as this.
“I left my axe with my son.” Snaga’s smile became thin. “A good lad. Big. He’d be about your age, Firestone. When I sailed from home—oh, it was autumn some . . . four years ago now. Odin take it. Four years . . . ?”
Harrac didn’t know ‘autumn’ or ‘Odin’—they didn’t sound like Haccu words—but he knew about listening.
“Anyway, when I sailed I consulted a vo— . . . a witch, and she told me if I sailed in that season I wouldn’t return to the shores of the Uulisk. So I left my axe, Hel, with my son. My father wielded that axe, and his father. I didn’t want it to be gone from our people.”
“Why did you sail then?” Harrac had never seen a sea, or even a lake, but he knew the Nola pond that came in the rainy season and it seemed no great leap of imagination to picture it many times as wide with men crossing the waters on wooden rafts. “If the witch said—”
“A man can’t live by prophecy. I had a duty to my clan mates. How many of them might not have come home if I stayed in my hut? How would my son have valued me or my axe then?” Again the smile. “Besides. I might go back yet!”
“What happened?”
“Sailed too far, into warm seas, lost too many men, got taken captive, taken south, sold as a slave, taken farther south.”
Harrac’s eyes returned to the scars on Snaga’s wrists. The Snake-Stick tribes dealt in slaves with the moors beyond the north mountains. Took men captive too sometimes. Only the ghost plain stood between the Haccu and the Snake-Sticks with their ropes and markets where men were sold like cattle.
“Did you escape?”
“Your king bought me for his guard. The Laccoa.” He nodded back at the wall.
Harrac knew a dozen stories about the Laccoa. If there were a more dangerous band than the king-of-many-tribes’ elite, the elders of the Haccu had no knowledge of them.
“The Laccoa has slave-warriors?” Harrac knew they had men from many tribes and even lands beyond the king’s domain, but he hadn’t heard of any enslaved to fight.
“Not any more.” Snaga patted the sword across his knees. “I won my freedom after our first battle. Salash from the deep Sahar had taken a desert town. We took it back.”
“The Salash—”
“There’s a better question you should be asking.” Snaga cut across him.
Harrac sat back on his haunches. He looked across at the waiting crowd. Old men playing mancala with wooden boards and shiny pebbles. Tribal warriors hunched under their spears, chewing betel, merchants seated on cushions beside their mounded wares.
“Why is a warrior of the Laccoa sitting to talk with me?”
Snaga nodded. “Because you have fire in you.” He gave Harrac a narrow look. “Why did you come here?”
“I beat a man. My father sent me to tell the king.” Harrac felt more guilty saying it out loud before a stranger than he had before the people of his village.
“Was he an enemy? This man?”
“The son of the leader of our warriors. A warrior of repute and a rich man.”
“What was it that made you attack him?” Snaga asked.
“He told me to fetch him water.”
“What really made you attack him?”
“He told me—”
“No.” Snaga slapped Harrac across the face, a heavy, casual blow, so unexpected that even Harrac’s speed couldn’t help him.
Harrac surged up, toward the Northman, but Snaga planted a hand on his scarred chest and pushed him back without apparent effort. “Why?”
“Because he was there. Because he was big.” Harrac’s face burned with the blow.
“Now you know why I’m sitting with you, Firestone.” Snaga stood, brushing the dust from his robes. “Because I saw the killer in you.”
Harrac stood too, willing himself not to rub his cheek. “I’m sorry for what I did. I hope Broken Bowl gets better. I don’t want to be a killer.”
Snaga shrugged. “Perhaps you’re not. I was the same at your age, too ready to put my fist into someone’s face for looking at me wrong. Full of fire and anger, without reason or anything to aim it at. Young men show the world a fierce face, and behind it? Confusion. Lost angry boys not know their place in the world yet. That’s just how some of us grow—most grow through it, some die, some are stuck with it. Those are the true killers, blood to bone.
“Killers who fight against what they are make better soldiers than those who don’t. Marry a killer’s instinct to a conscience and you may not get a happy man, but you get a useful one.” He started walking back toward the gates. “Come on. We’ll see if you’ve got enough in your arms to match what’s in your head and heart.”
“But—” Harrac hurried to catch up. Snaga waved at the guards to open the gates. “I need to speak with the king. Then go home.”
“Better to serve first—speak later. Our king is not a kind man.” Snaga led on through the gates. “His justice tends toward . . . harsh. Go to him once you’ve wet your spear in his service though, and you’ll get a more reasonable judgment. Oomaran appreciates warriors.”
Harrac stopped, with the gates closing behind him, narrowing away the world he knew, the path home. “I’m not a killer . . .”
Snaga came back, put his hand to Harrac’s shoulder to steer him. “My life didn’t end the day they put chains upon me. I endured. So will you. Perhaps we’ll both go home in the end.”
Harrac looked up at the giant. “Why don’t you? Go, I mean. You’re free.”
“Free and a thousand miles from the coast. Lacking money or the skills to travel these wilds. But most of all? I’m a Northman.” He held out his arm and pulled back the sleeve of his robes. Harrac wasn’t sure if he was more shocked by the skin, white as the linen itself, or the sheer amount of muscle heaped upon the bone. “It’s dangerous for a Haccu to travel out beyond the tribes he knows. Even in the lands that pay tribute to the king-of-many-tribes there are villages where you would be speared or find an arrow in your back. For me—ten times as hard.” He patted the sword at his hip. “Not so good against arrows, and Afrique is a land of hunters.” Snaga looked back toward the gates. “If I’m ever getting out of here it will be in a war party, a small army—a band of brothers, men bound to each other. No man’s an island. Not even the ones that think they are. Especially not them.”
* * * * *
Harrac proved himself strong and fast, balanced in hand and eye. A year proved him hard enough of mind and spirit, ready to endure, ready to bleed. A second year proved him ready to kill.
Snaga sat with him that night, backs against a baobab tree, away from the low fire set to draw in any remaining enemy. They had found the tribeless raiders at noon, a large band of men outcast from many nations. Camped without care, secure in their numbers. They called themselves sand-wolves. Jackals would be closer. Most carried hide shields, machete, spears. A group of ten Laccoa broke among them, having crawled through the scrub beneath grass mats. Snaga led them, laying about with his heavy sword in a red carnage before running for the casca bushes that hid the rest of the Laccoa.
Harrac had waited among the bushes with his bow and his spear and his sword, a curved blade—only the Northman carried straight iron. He had crouched among his brothers, sweating. Each time the casca thorns pricked him it seemed that he heard his name spoken—Long Toe calling it as he had the first and only time it fell upon Harrac’s ears. More thorn pricks, and other voices spoke his name—his father, Broken Bowl, his brothers, a chorus, all of them calling him home, calling him any place but there among the thorn bushes with the sand-wolves racing toward him howling for blood.
He loosed two arrows and brought at least one man down. Another died upon his spear, set into the ground, a longer thorn amid the casca spines. In the clash and chaos of blades Harrac ha
d kept his head, the red heat running in his veins, all thoughts of running burned away. There had been a joy in it. Aloor of the Nuccabi had fought beside him, fat and strong, a clever warrior without mercy. Three Stars of the Haccu had fought on his other side, tall, serious, turning to grey, a master of the sword. Three Stars had fallen, taken by a wild swing of a machete. Harrac’s blade had all but severed the head of the man who killed him.
Now, sitting with Snaga against the baobab he felt sick. The visions wouldn’t leave him—flesh laid open to the bone, men screaming, limbs parted from bodies, more blood that he had imagined possible.
“You learned a lesson here today, Firestone.” Snaga kept his eyes on the night. He spoke low, amid the whirr and chirp of the darkness. “It’s a lesson that will burn you, but if you hold it close even so, it will make you the man you were meant to be. That’s the first lesson—choosing what to hold on to, even if it scars, or marks, or changes, or ends you. We may not understand why we choose one thing to take close over another, but it is important that we do, and keep them tight. That faith makes us one with the gods.”
Only the night spoke, the endless, ageless voice of the dark.
“Do you hear me, Firestone?”
“Harrac.”
“What?”
“My name is Harrac.”
“Thank you,” Snaga said.
* * * * *
Three years proved Harrac ready to sacrifice.
“You should have gone to the king last year. You’re a blooded Laccoa. Oomaran would have sent you home with cattle, or at the least paid you a handsome fee to stay.” Snaga scanned the bush land around them. Dust trails rose in several places.
“I wanted to see you go home,” Harrac said. The Snake-Stick would find them soon. The bush offered many places to hide but the surviving Laccoa left a trail any skilled hunter could follow, and they didn’t have time to disguise it further.
“I was tracking raiders,” Snaga said, glancing back at Harrac. “Not going home.”
Harrac watched the Viking and said nothing. As leader of the fifth Laccoa division, Snaga had the right to make such decisions, but tracking Snake-Stick raiders for ten days had taken them far beyond prudence, out past the furthest reaches of the king-of-many-tribes’ influence. Out to lands where even the Laccoa must tread lightly. The Snake-Stick raiders had led them into Ugand territory and set up an ambush with their allies.
Snaga grinned. “I always said the only way home for me was with a band of brothers around me.” He looked around at the Laccoa, their ranks thinned but the core of their strength remaining. “We made it farther than I expected. Another week and I could have shown you the sea!”
“I would liked to have seen it,” Harrac said. “The gods were not with us though.”
Snaga pointed to the east. “You have the command, Firestone. Take the men and head back. If you reach the grey scrub you’ll stand a good chance. When the Snake-Sticks come, disperse and make separately to the great rocks we saw after the river.”
“It’s a good plan.” Harrac sat back in the creoat bush and ran his whetstone along the length of his blade another time. “Why are you telling me to lead?”
“I’m going back along our trail to make an ambush of my own. You know what I can do if I get in among them.”
Harrac didn’t argue. He knew where that led. He gathered the men and told them the plan while Snaga crouched a way off, scanning the bush. Nine of the Laccoa would not leave without arguing. Harrac sent them to Snaga and the big man held each by the shoulder, speaking softly to them, extracting a promise. They returned one by one. Hard men, killers, eyes red.
Harrac led the band away.
* * * * *
Snaga found his spot a few hundred yards back along their trail. The Snake-Sticks were close now, some still letting their dust rise to spook the Laccoa, others moving with more skill, almost unseen save for the occasional alarm cries of a kessot or the flutter of minta birds taking flight.
Snaga rolled under the skeletal branches of a thellot bush, letting the dust cake him, drawing about him armfuls of the ancient seedpod cases that lie in drifts beneath the thellot. Thus disguised he lay in wait.
The hunting party came by presently, confident in their numbers though stepping carefully so as to raise the dust only to waist height. Three slender, long-haired Snake-Sticks led an Ugand war party, squat men with long, thin spears and heavy clubs of knotwood. Three dozen in all perhaps.
Snaga rose silently and ran into the midst of them while a Snake-Stick tracker paused to study the confusion in the trail. The Viking loosed his roar only at the last moment when the majority had turned their heads, if not their spears, his way.
His heavy sword sheared through the neck of the first man he reached, ploughing on to slice the next from collarbone to hip. The thrust of his foot broke a man’s knee. He drove his pommel into an Ugand’s face, then spun, arm stretched, scything his blade through every man within his arc. The dust rose about him, battlefield smoke, the dark shapes of men closing on every side. Red slaughter followed.
* * * * *
Snaga lay on the ground, head raised, resting on the leg of a dead Ugand. The Ugand dead sprawled on all sides, the dust spattered with their blood, reaching out in dark arcs in all directions, too much even for the thirsty ground to swallow. Close on forty men butchered, tumbled in untidy heaps, broken-limbed, red gore spread wide.
Three spears pierced the Viking: gut, thigh, chest. Harrac knew at least two of them were fatal wounds. His own leg had given out, perhaps broken, his eye closed by an Ugand club.
“You came back. I told you not to.” The blood around the spear in Snaga’s chest bubbled as he spoke.
“Just ten of us. Aloor is leading the rest back as you ordered.”
“How many . . . now . . .”
“Just me and you, I think. Some of the Ugand ran away.”
“They’ll bring the other parties quick enough.”
Harrac nodded and pulled himself closer to the Viking, wondering if the other men of the Viking tribe were as deadly. He would guess that Snaga had felled twenty of the enemy by his own hand. Even with the spears in him he had fought on, snapping off the hafts—falling only when there were no foes left to stand against him.
“I—” Snaga coughed crimson. “I’ll tell you a Haccu secret.”
Harrac grinned. He hoped the Ugand would kill him quickly. “You don’t know any Haccu secrets, old man.”
“Harrac.” Snaga had never spoken his name before. He paused as if forgetting where he was. “My other son is called Snorri. You would like him.” Snaga set a hand to Harrac’s shoulder. “You Haccu with your secret names.” He coughed again. “But the old Haccu, the wise ones, know this truth.” His voice faded and Harrac leaned in to hear, wincing at the pain in his ribs. “Your secret names are gifts, to share with those you honour or love—but it’s your use-names, the ones young boys are so eager to shed, that say the most about you. The names you wear in full view, simple, ordinary, shared with friend and foe alike. That’s where the truth lies. The stories behind them are the stories of where you came from . . . where you’re going.”
Harrac saw the shapes of men moving through the bush on several sides now. He reached for his sword, dulled by use, the point snapped off, lost in some Ugand’s corpse. “I won’t let them take me.”
“Find something worth holding to.” Snaga didn’t seem to hear him, his eyes fixed on the sky, sharing the same faded blue. His fingers gripped Harrac’s shoulder with surprising strength. “Tell my boy . . . tell Snorri . . .” And the hand fell away.
The Ugand broke cover, screaming, and as Harrac struggled to stand a heavy net fell about him from behind. He tripped and fell, roaring. The first of the screaming Ugand reached him, spear raised to skewer him. Snaga’s sword carved the leg from under the man. A second Ugand drove his spear through Snaga’s neck, but the Snake-Stick who had netted Harrac stepped over his prey to guard it.
Harr
ac lay without motion, eyes on Snaga, now pierced by still more spears as if the Ugand couldn’t believe so big a man truly dead. The Snake-Sticks would sell him north, a prize Laccoa, a fighting slave for some sultan’s army or the blood-pits of a merchant prince. Snaga had said his life didn’t end when they put chains upon him—Harrac too would endure. The net tightened about him and he said nothing.
Snaga had found him at the gates, a boy-turned-man, angry, with blood on his hands, and he had held to him. Perhaps to replace his own lost son, but there was no shame in that. Snaga had spoken of Harrac, offering guidance, but so often he truly spoke of himself, his own struggles, his own choices. He had been right though. Firestone was the name that said most about its owner and Harrac had worn it without shame before those he loved. Both of them, Snaga and Harrac, were men who looked for something to commit to—something to guard—and once sworn to their cause, both would die for it.
Harrac grunted as they lifted him in the net, the Snake-Sticks carrying him, hanging from a pole between four men, the Ugand whooping around, raising dust, thick as their anger. He watched until the bodies of friend and foe became lost. He travelled unseeing now, cocooned in the net, hemmed in by bodies. Perhaps it was like this to travel the oceans, swaying and bouncing with the waves. He had no knowing what lay ahead of him. Things as far beyond his imagination as Ibowen had been when he first walked from his village. Maybe there would even be snow. All he knew was that he would carry his name with him: Firestone. He had asked Snaga how it would sound in the tongue of the north.
“Kashta, my friend. That’s how we would say it. Kashta. It’s good name. Hold it close.”
All in a Night's Work
David Anthony Durham
The night had been uneventful, peaceful even, tranquil and quiet. A real easy-going pleasure.
I should've known that was a bad sign.
There was a reason I was relaxed. Khufu--the prince I was assigned to protect since I'd turned twelve and become what's called "the prince's shadow"--was away on a secret trip to Heliopolis. While he was gone, I got to pretend to be him. I pretty much just went through the routine of things Khufu normally did when he was home. It didn't fool anyone in the palace, but we liked to keep the routine up so that the prince's enemies didn't know he was out of the protection of the city.
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