by A. R. Knight
"Then you should know Ignos wants this," Malo dares to say.
"That he wants you here?" She says. "Why else would your priest make you search for simple spear, of which there must be so many where you're from. How would you have followed my trail – I tried to hide my tracks - without Ignos guiding you?"
"So that I can stop you," Malo says. "Suicidal vengeance is not what you are your people need now."
"They're not my people," she fires back. "We are together. And you will do as we say, because you owe us that much."
She's made a judge of his character, a good one. Malo knows he can't refuse. Because she's right, if they want to throw away their lives like this, if they want to end their suffering in one hopeless battle, who is he to deny them?
"If you want to catch them, you will have to move," Malo looks at the water. It's so peaceful and empty.
Damantum is surrounded by river-ways. Malo would go to their banks when he had time, sit and watch boats flow up and down with their catches, with their crates of things for trade or sale. Refuse from a crowded city swirling in the eddies. Here, though, the water is unsullied. Pure, clear and beautiful with the reflections of the trees above showing on its surface.
He wants to hold on to the moment, but she keeps going.
"I'll get them up," she says, then catches him by surprise with a slight smile. "I just realized, what's your name? I need something to call you."
"Malo," he offers.
She says her name is Naila, and then she's off, the water swishing in her urn.
4 A Warrior Must March
Later, Malo’s backtracking through the jungle, only this time not alone but at the head of a strange force. In daylight he gets a clearer picture of what Naila's army looks like. There are a few young boys in it, the oldest maybe twelve seasons. Not hardened at all. Mothers and sisters. Wives and daughters. There's not a hopeless look among them. Not an ounce of fear. Despite their lack of training, weapons, and chances of success, they're determined.
Which is something.
For part of the walk, Malo allows himself to think that maybe, maybe they'll earn a place in Damantum. Maybe they'll get something besides an execution.
"You need better weapons," Malo says to Naila. She's staying next to him at the front of the column. "Most of what you have won't hold up in a fight. Not for a second."
"I know," she says. "We need food too. We have to go back to our village. There's some things I doubt your force found."
Malo supposes it's possible. They weren't there to loot place, after all. A sacrifice is more valuable than any gem, any treasure. Besides, Jakkan wouldn't want to sully the honor of those he's taking by desecrating their town as well.
"You ever use that?" Malo says as they walk.
She's still holding his spear, though her grip is oddly placed towards the back end of its haft.
"Not all of us have swords and knives," Naila says. "I fought with sticks, and staffs. Bamboo branches long and thick. This is not so different."
"Try to hit someone over the head with this, and you'll find it doesn't work so well," Malo replies. "This is a short spear, you should be holding it further up if you want to strike. Jab, not thrust. Strike and dodge."
Naila glances at the weapon as they trudge over a bed of ferns and wildflowers. "It doesn't matter," she says. "Ignos will be with us."
"You'll be saying that when you die if you go on as you are."
"We're stronger than you think."
"It's not your strength that I'm worried about," Malo says. "It's your weapons, your training, what this group will do the first time they get into a real fight."
"We'll surprise you."
"Where did your village come from?" Malo says during a break.
The entire crew is gathered in a leafy clearing made, apparently, when some storm had toppled a large tree. They're sitting around it, perched on the trunk and squashing small plants as they devour a lunch of fruit and edible roots foraged along the way.
"We were part of a larger tribe that outgrew the land it had, so we elected to leave."
"Outgrew?"
She gestures. Vines and trees, and the screams of birds in the distance. "Does your home look like this?"
Malo shakes his head. Describes Damantum and its tens of thousands, its endless fields overflowing with fruits and vegetables. Its pens swimming in animals ready for slaughter. There are the poor and the starving, yes, but on the whole, Malo thinks the Charre keep their people living, and living well.
He's expecting Naila to acknowledge that, to state how much better the Charre have it, but instead he only gets a small smile.
"You think you have everything," Naila says. "But what do you do when you want to be alone? When you want to run through the trees, or swim in a pool?"
"There are pools in Damantum," Malo counters. He doesn't say you need to pay for them, and that they're often cramped and crowded.
"And trees?"
"Some."
Naila donates him a nod. "We can go in any direction here. My family, our friends, we grew tired of where we were, so we chose to leave. Set up our own village, made our own laws. Freedom, Malo. Have you ever known it?"
There's a rigid series of steps from Malo's birth that brought him here. Choices, made by his parents, teachers, priests and leaders. Few made by him. Malo's not naive enough to see no value in that, knows there's quite a lot he's gained from that structure, but when Naila's asking him if Malo's created his own life, if he's known freedom, he has to shake his head.
Not her kind, no.
5 A Warrior Must Try
Ignos is sliding well into afternoon by the time they make it near the village that has become the source of Malo's frustrations. He and Naila lead the column, but he's the one that holds up his hand for them to stop as they head into the last batch of trees before the clearing.
"There are shadows moving beyond the tree line," Malo whispers, wincing at the conversations springing up among children and their mothers, one sister to another behind him.
"You don't think it's branches moving in the breeze?" Naila replies, but she crouches next to him anyway, hiding her face behind the leaves of a fern.
At Malo's headshake, Naila gives a quick, sharp whistle that immediately culls the crowd into silence. They drop to the ground too, and most draw what weapons they have and hold them ready. It's an impressive maneuver, and one that gives Malo the slightest bit of hope that this force isn't going to be a complete mess come real combat.
"Let's get close," Malo suggests. "Just you and I, though."
Naila nods, exchanges a quick glance and palm-up wave of her hand with the woman behind them, who passes the signal down the column. Then she taps Malo on the arm - they're clear to move.
Malo walks by rolling his feet; placing his heel first and then gradually sliding the rest of his foot to meet it. The motion is slow, but keeps the impact light. No snapping twigs, and crackling leaves are muffled by the gradual breakup of their fibers. Naila, who's proving to be a lot more than the villager he imagined, catches on quick and the two shift their way to the very edge of the trees without a single sound breaking through the jungle's ambient rustles and cries.
The village has four main houses, and each one is squat and square. One is recent stone - Malo can tell because the rocks themselves aren't scarred from weather or painted over - and the rest are thatched bamboo and other branches. In the middle stands the humble beginnings of a Tier, only about a meter high and built upon a single large slate stone. Standing next to it and watching his hunter move is the clear leader, marked by the plumes of bright red and yellow feathers around his neck.
Malo bets that if the man turns the necklace over, each and every one of those feathers would be pure black.
These aren't Charre warriors. Not a follow-up raid from Damantum - which would be odd. No, these are Solare.
"They're from our old tribe," Naila confirms Malo's suspicions with a whisper. "Probably coming
to trade, and now they think we've left it all behind."
"Doesn't look like they mind." The leader is standing over a small pile of crude weapons, tools, and Malo spies a couple of bracelets on his wrists that don't fit.
"It's not honorable to steal," Naila has an edge now. "They shouldn't be --"
"They think you're dead or gone," Malo interrupts. "The question is whether they'll give it back when you prove them wrong."
Naila doesn't look too sure about that.
"I don't know," Naila says. "My father, the other warriors might, but I never dealt with them."
They wait a little longer, Malo hoping these fighters, of which he counts nearly a dozen, will leave and spare him the trouble of making a decision. Naila, for her part, seems to be flipping between excitement and that fear that comes when a bluff is suddenly called - will her band actually survive a fight if she pulls them into one?
"We can't just stay here," Malo says as the sky turns an orange-purple. "Either we ask them to leave and give back your home, or we run and try to find some other place to stay."
"Leaving would mean giving up," Naila says. "Giving up what we came for."
"Then we're going," Malo says.
"Stay ready," Naila says back to the group. "We don't know what they're going to do."
Normally Malo isn't be much for head-on tactics. It's generally a blunder to show your force and march them right to the enemy. Except, he's not sure these are the enemy. And he's not leading soldiers - he's not leading people who can march in formation, or who can take battle tactics and implement them.
So he leads the mob out of the woods and startles the hunters milling about the center of the village. Some are still carrying their latest plunder as all of them turn to regard who's caught them in the act. It's a moment of truth, and Malo's hoping they'll start to retreat, or at least get cautious.
What he gets is nothing more than a couple of smiles. Not what he wants.
"Tasa, you've come at a bad time," Naila opens the conversation - Malo realizes she knows the leader, who Naila's addressing with a hard steel voice. "The Charre attacked our village. We lost many."
The leader with the feathers takes a step towards them. Up close, he's tall and the color chocolate, with layers of black tattoos spiraled around his chest and arms. His long hair is pulled tight behind his head, and he wears a long pale scar across one cheek that curls up to meet his lip, one that stretches into a sick smile as he gets a full view of Naila's force.
"This is all you have left?" Tasa almost purrs the words. "One might say you're not even a tribe anymore, Naila."
"What we have," Naila replies. "Is more than enough for a tribe. More than enough for this village. It's ours, as is what you're wearing, what your hunters are taking."
Malo has to give Naila this: she's damn brave. Foolish, even.
Tasa hardens. "You want these?" His hands pull on the bracelets. "Why? Only a tribe that means to stay alive would need these. You can't do that. There's only one man here, and he barely looks more than a boy."
Malo wants to speak, shut down this Tasa, but he stays silent when he sees Naila slide into a merciless grin of her own. This is her fight, her territory. It's up to her what happens next.
"I did not ask you, Tasa," Naila says. "You're going to leave what you stole. Then you will walk away from here, back to your home."
Tasa looks over her head, towards the column. "Naila is saying we need to leave." Tasa's talking to his own warriors now, and, Malo knows, to their own. "She calls us thieves, looters. The lowest of the low. I, however, believe Ignos understands the service we are providing, and is thanking us for the offer we make to you. Come with us, come back to our village. We will find space for you. Work for you."
It is, altogether, a good offer. One Malo would take if he were in charge.
"We do not need a new tribe." Naila apparently doesn't think so. "Leave, Tasa. Now."
"You spit in Ignos' face, Naila," Tasa replies. "As the price for your insolence, we will keep what we've found. You can keep your huts, your ruins."
Tulsa starts to bark orders, to tell his nine warriors to get ready to go. Naila cuts Tasa off with a series of long strides forward, right up to him. She's well shorter than Tasa, but she makes up for it by standing straight, by bearing the sheer defiance of her being towards Tasa, who can't quite manage his sardonic smile in the face of all that fierceness.
"Leave it," Naila says. "Or we'll take it back."
Malo would've cautioned her against the threat. Would have said that a fight is the last thing this group needs, the last thing they can afford. But now he's caught up in it, and he doesn't like that these worthless hunters are taking from a tribe that's already suffered. It's not honorable, and it deserves a reckoning.
One that Malo, clutching his kukri, can give.
Tasa, for his part, turns his lack of quip into a frown, into narrowed eyes and set shoulders. "You're welcome to try."
That's all he needs say. Malo, the whole group of twenty or so women and children, and Naila burst forward at Tasa's words and Naila's following battle-cry. They're brandishing their cooking knives, their rocks and stones. The one with the bow aims and looses an arrow, which flies over the heads of everyone and embeds itself in the Tier.
Malo's feet pound dry grass, his blood surges, and he feels the kukri's lethal weight in his right hand as he runs. The crowd roars around him, both Naila's villagers and Tasa's warriors calling to Ignos for glory and victory. It's exhilarating, it's madness.
Yet Malo's training kicks in and he processes the battle. Ten, counting Tasa, hunters bearing short spears and knives tucked in their belts. They array themselves in a line with the Tier to their backs, waiting for the mob to reach them. Waiting to be broken apart upon the villager's sacrificial stone.
Waiting for the villages themselves to die upon their spears.
Malo chooses a target towards the middle, a smaller warrior, more slender than Malo, who has his short spear up and ready. It's not black glass like the Charre, but bamboo with a broken rock tied to the tip. He jabs towards Malo as he closes, but the hunter telegraphs the move with a flick of his eyes and a twitch of his right arm. Malo sidesteps, flips the kukri to his left hand and, with his right, grips the spear and holds it so that the warrior can't pull his weapon back.
The kukri finds its mark, a quick dive into the warrior's chest and back out and then in again and Malo follows the last stab with a kick to knock the shocked hunter aside. Malo pulls the spear free from the weak, loose grip. Now he has the weapon he needs.
Malo turns left, catches the next warrior- busy with a pair of weathered women and their sharpened sticks - with a strike to the side. Another in and out and in jab sequence and the warrior's guard is broken. Malo leaves him to the mob.
With a moment to breathe, Malo takes stock of the fight. He's looking for a spot to stick the spear, and what he finds is disaster.
The Charre fight with the intent to take sacrifices. The Solare, from what he understands, do too: but not here, not now. Naila's group is being laid out, wounded and kicked aside, stabbed and beaten away. The hunters are doing what they been trained to do, and Naila's band doesn't have enough numbers to overcome their calm counter attacks. Their methodical stabs and switches, kicks and dodges.
Even as he stands there, Malo sees the beginnings of a retreat. Naila herself is dragging a young, wounded girl back from the line, a bloody scratch on Naila's own shoulder. Others are abandoning their knives and rocks, choosing instead to pull friends and family away from Tasa's sharp spears.
Which means Malo has to run too before Tasa realizes he's still there. So Malo skips back, out of reach as the hunters reform their line, tend to their own wounded.
Tasa, though, takes the moment and calls to Naila. "This is what you get when you bring women, children, to a warrior's game."
"Leave," Naila protests, but there's cracks in her steel now.
Tasa pulls a nasty look, and Malo r
eadies himself to jump between an attack. But one of the hunters Malo stabbed moans from behind Tasa, and the chief turns. Tightens up his face at the sight of his own wounded, and glances back Naila.
"You can have your village, Naila. Until we come back and take it." Tasa's hunters pick up their wounded, and shuffle out of the clearing towards the north. Naila and the rest turn to their wounds, and only Malo goes to make sure Tasa keeps moving. To make sure they aren't simply doubling back for an ambush. Only when the hunters vanish deep into the trees does Malo let loose his taut muscles, take a deep breath for the first time in what feels like forever.
Tasa fought with nine other warriors. In those few moments, they wounded nearly fifteen of Naila's force. Tasa ended with four hurt that Malo saw, including the two he fought. It isn't funny, it isn't close.
"It was a slaughter," Malo tells Naila later, as the wounded receive bandages, salves, and rest in front of fires sparked to life. "If he hadn't decided to leave, we all would've died. He might have, too, but you would not have a tribe anymore."
Naila's staring at the flickering flames as though she's seeing her own grim future play out in front of her. "I know."
She turns and her tear-stained face greets Malo. He's taken aback, he wasn't sure Naila even had that emotion in her.
"We'll never catch your people now," Naila says. "Even if we did, we couldn't rescue my father. Their fathers and husbands."
Malo doesn't think any of his words will help, so he stays quiet, watches the fire. She's right. She's lucky. His eyes drift over to his black glass spear, resting on the rock besides Naila. If she lets him take it, then he could go, take the last reminder away and let her heal.
6 A Warrior Must Decide
Malo's not sure how much time passes there in front of the fire, listening to its crackle and the slowly settling sounds of the wounded and exhausted around them. At some point, a saint Malo doesn't see drops a couple bowls of roasted roots and vegetables and a hunk of melon from one of the nearby trees. They eat automatically, in silence.
