by A. R. Knight
He's never actually lost before. Not in anything other than sparring contests or childhood games. Every engagement with the Charre, every foray against rebellious factions or jungle tribes has ended in victory. Most of them with minimal injuries. He finds losing doesn't get better as it marinates with time.
What happens instead is he turns to anger, to excuses. Naila had no reason to fight that battle, no point in risking her entirely unprepared group. She's lucky they're not all dead, a point which Malo skates to another - namely, what's he still doing here? All that's waiting by these cook fires, outside these ramshackle homes, is a cutting death whenever Tasa decides to come back.
"I think," Malo rises. "When Tasa comes back, you should go with him. Give up this place and take his offer. Keep your lives."
Naila says nothing, doesn't turn to look at him. The blankness on her face catches Malo wrong, like someone's grabbed his festering emotions and yanked them front and center.
"These people trusting you," Malo pours heat. "They will do what you say because you promise their village and their lives back, but all they're going to get is death, or a sacrifice. You're not a leader. You don't have the right to take their lives into your hands. Give them hope when you have none, because there is no hope here, Naila."
At last he gets a reaction out of her. A wince of those eyes, then a half-turned head his way.
"You mean we don't have hunters, like them. We don't have hardened warriors who know how to jab spears and knives." Naila speaks the words like a ghost, numb and dead. "Is that the only way to live in this world? Do we have to go find sacrifices like everyone else? Do I have to hold a spear?" Naila picks up Malo's weapon. "Do I have to tell the children that they have to learn to use this or they won't survive?"
"Yes." There's no time for soft words anymore.
"Then I need your help," Naila says. "I know it's not what you intended, but you're right. We won't win as we are. We're strong, yes, and we have courage." Naila runs her gaze across the sleeping forms around them. "If your way is the only way, then teach us. Make us hunters, make us warriors. Help my tribe survive."
Malo's shaking his head before Naila's finished. "I can't. I need to go. And even if I could somehow train all of you before Tasa returns, his hunters will still have experience. They'll still win."
His words rob something from Naila and she lets Malo's spear fall to the ground. This time he picks it up, stands. It's late, but the moon is bright and Malo still has a pack of supplies. If he marches hard, in a couple of days he might catch up to Jakkan and the others on the edge of the jungle. After all, one man can move so much faster than many.
He doesn't make it two steps before he hears Naila stand up behind him. Hears her sharp inhale.
"You owe us," Naila says and Malo turns to see the same defiance he witnessed on the day they took her father. "You've taken everything from us, and now you're condemning us to death too. You claim to follow Ignos, but this is against everything he stands for."
A thousand arguments sweep to Malo's lips. Protests about the impossibility of training this ragged group, about how it wasn't really him who took their husbands and fathers, about how Naila couldn't possibly hold him responsible for Tasa's actions. All those arguments die a withering death beneath the crushing guilt cascading over him.
The Charre never mean to wipe out the jungle tribes. The Solare are an endless source of sacrifices. That this one would be extinguished, would die by his people's hands... Malo's not sure he can bear that burden. He's not sure if he's capable of abandoning someone so desperate.
So he compromises with his own soul.
"If I stay," Malo says slow, feeling out his argument as he says it. "If I stay, you have to listen to me. At least regarding the fighting, the training. We'll have to be partners, Naila. Because if we aren't, we're all going to die."
7 A Warrior Must Teach
The next morning sparks a string of days that flow with constant action. Naila keeps her promise, and Malo's given time with her people. After an initial run through some exercises - a sprint around the jungle, a test to see how they hold their spears, he takes the sixteen women and older children with enough strength to train and divides them into groups of four.
Each set, as the Charre call them, gets a leader, a supporting trio of a caller, supporter, and killer. Each leader gets a spear, which they manage to fashion from branches and rocks as best they can, and a series of torn, dyed cloth strips that they wind around their arms. White means run, red means attack, and yellow means they need help. When noise comes to dominate a fight, Malo's learned, having a way to communicate by sight alone can make all the difference.
Callers get the rocks and slings made from animal skins. Small knives as back-ups. Malo makes the kids the primary targets for this one, sending them up the trees to where they get their vantage points and where, with the added fall, even a lightly thrown stone can do some damage. He doesn't tell the children this, but being up high gives them a measure of safety too, a distance from the surefire carnage on ground level.
Someone has to be able to get to those that need aid, medical or otherwise. The supporters get sharpened sticks and what scrap weapons they can fashion. They also fill packs with poultices and bandages made from tightly woven moss. Malo emphasizes the stick and run technique with these four - staying out of the fight is the best way they can help those stuck in it.
And the killers. When he assigned the titles, Naila looked disappointed that she wasn't placed here, and Malo, looking at the four standing in front of him, wonders if he's made the right play. Each and every one of them is a mother, each with a child playing the role of a caller. Naila, when he told her the names, initially objects, and something in Malo twitches as he says, in reply, that the reason these women are perfect killers is because they're truly fighting for something more than themselves.
The last thing a killer can afford, after all, is a strike that falls short. Is a last effort that doesn't go all the way.
Naila hasn't looked at Malo the same way since, and her eyes hit him now with a combination of wariness and respect. Malo tries to throw out more smiles, but he feels he's revealed a dangerous part of himself, and it's not one he can hide.
So he dives into the lessons with the killers, who get the rest of the real spears in the village. Who get the crude, but sharp knives and the thicker mosswraps the village hunters used to wear. Ones made to keep claws from drawing blood, but that might turn a loose swipe of a blade.
First, the lessons are mostly simple. How to hold the spear, how to stab and lunge or, in desperation, throw it. With knives, he emphasizes closing quickly, keeping your feet shuffling from side to side and never presenting an easy target. Work the blade in and out without lunging and giving up your options. The idea, Malo says, is to weaken, distract and disorient your enemy.
What he doesn't say is that keeping them alive allows for sacrifice. They've had too much of that.
For their part, Naila's group is eager to learn, from the oldest woman to the youngest son. Malo thinks he understands why: there's an exhilaration to being exposed to things that had been forbidden to you. Most tribes would never teach a mother how to wield the spear, would never give a young boy a pair of knives and tell them how to slice away and attack. No daughter would be taught how to string a bow or shoot an arrow with accuracy. These are molds he's breaking, and from their excitement, the breaking is long overdue.
Nights by the fire follow every hard day, spent around the crackling fire sharing progress with Naila until Malo collapses on his bedroll exhausted, wishing he was under the glowing lights of his city. Back in Damantum, away from the mosquitoes and the growing fear in his mind that no matter how much he does, this group will not be ready. That no matter how much time he has, Tasa's going to slaughter them all.
8 A Warrior Must Plan
Word comes in the afternoon. One of the Callers, positioned between the village and where Naila says Tasa's tribe lives, rushes
in shouting that they're coming. That it's not just ten hunters anymore, but as many as thirty.
Thirty.
Malo hears the number and goes cold. He'd been hoping Tasa would come back with his original nine, that he'd stride right into the village all haughty and confident, allowing Malo's little squads to spring a trap. Now, though, they would be so outnumbered a trap like that wouldn't matter. They'd all be dead anyway.
"How long?" he asks the Caller, a girl several years younger than Naila.
"A day's march," the Caller replies. "I saw their torches from the top of the crown."
The crown is a rise not far from the village, and one with tall trees that can give a climber a long view of the canopy. Malo's had a Caller stationed there every day and night since he formed the squads, and he can tell from the way the children fight over the shifts that contributing is doing wonders for their morale.
Even this one, with her dire report, sounds defiant. Hopeful.
"We can't wait for them," Naila says as soon as Malo dismisses the Caller.
The two of them have just sat down for yet another meal of warmed vegetables and fruit. This time, though, there's a few added scraps of meat - a hunt from the morning that managed to snag some small, furry creatures. Malo takes a bite and savors the bland, stringy food. Anything other than the taro, lettuce and beans he's been eating every meal since they returned to the village.
"Now you want to run?" Malo replies.
"No, but if we let them get here with that many, we'll die for certain."
The way Naila says that makes Malo think she has an idea, so he looks at her with the question on his face and waits. Naila looks like she's waiting for Malo to get the same idea through some magical telepathy, and when it's clear he's not going to, she takes a deep breath and plunges ahead.
"We need to hit them earlier. Surprise them."
"They're hunters, and this group is not. Run them into the trees and you'll be picked apart."
"You don't need to be a hunter to know how to move through the jungle," Naila says. "All of us have called the jungle our home for our entire lives. You couldn't follow my trail, and, according to my people, I'm not a hunter."
Naila's certainly right about one thing, and that's if Tasa's hunters get to the village with their current numbers, they're all dead. Yet the idea of fighting them in the jungle... he realizes fight might be the wrong word. The jungle is a big, crowded place, and a clever soul can make a lot out of its many parts.
He starts with an idea, one Naila grabs, and then they're off and talking through the night, calling over Malo's sets and assigning opportunities, laying out the path for the tribe to survive.
9 A Warrior Must Deceive
The first hunter picks his way through the ferns, his grip loose and his face hanging in a bored stare. No expectation of an attack a couple of hours out from the village, no thinking that the cowardly assortment waiting for them there would do anything other than die.
Which is why the child's thrown rock hits the hunter hard from the tree, scores a blow against the man's head and knocks him to the ground. Malo catches his own breath for a second, watching with bow drawn from the eves of a tall, spindly tree across the clearing. The hunter can't die here. Not till he's done what needs doing.
But the hunter still has a bit of life in him, and he stands slowly, left hand held to his temple and, when he pulls it away, showing a bit of red. Then the hunter puts his right hand to his lips and makes a chirping call while his eyes scan the trees, looking for the attacker.
When the hunter's eyes find Malo, the Charre warrior lets his arrow loose with a soft thrum.
Killing isn't something Malo undertakes lightly. It's distasteful, a waste. Yet he hopes Ignos, burning above and witnessing every second, will forgive him this one. Will understand that the hunter's body, now back-down in the dirt, is nonetheless a pleading tribute to the god from a tribe in desperate need.
Malo sets another arrow to the string. Ignores the bugs biting at his legs. His thirst after sitting in this tree for the last hour. Everything falls away as the end begins.
Answering chirps come next - the hunter's friends. Five of them weaving through the wilderness, spears in hand. These aren't like the makeshift ones wrought from bamboo and whatever sharp rock Malo could find, but actual edged stone corded onto solid shafts. Each hunter has a knife looped through a rope around their waist, along with a water skin. Mosswraps act as loose skirts, while inked tattoos cover their back and chests.
Most of the hunters wear the glowing halo of Ignos front and center, but what surrounds the god is different on every body. Malo's not close enough to identify anything other than that the symbols differ from one person to the next, but if these hunters are like Charre warriors, then every inked icon stands for something that hunter has achieved. Given the sheer number of tattoos on these, it's clear Tasa isn't bringing his tribe's youngest fighters to this battle.
The habits of experience aren't an advantage when you're facing something unpredictable.
The five stalk their way to the body of their friend and the arrow sticking out from his chest. One cups his hands in front of his mouth - about to, Malo's sure, announce a loud warning call - but before a sound escapes his lips, another missile, this one a stiff green melon, plummets from a treetop at devastating speed. It hits the hunter and shatters into a juicy pink explosion that sends its target to the ground.
As the other four turn to look at what's happened, Malo looses his second arrow. It flies straight - not that hitting a standing, still target is all that difficult for the trained Charre warrior - and the arrow embeds itself in the closest hunter's back. He collapses too, and Malo mutters a quick prayer to Ignos for forgiveness.
And runs.
The remaining three hunters give chase. Malo hears them crunching through the ferns, hooting after him. On his right, Malo sees a tree with a single slash down the bark. As soon as his foot plants even with the tree, Malo cuts hard left. There's a small, root-covered slope here leading to a muddy pit, one that's hard to see through the long ferns leaves providing cover. The warrior plants on the last root and leaps, covering most of the pit in a single bound.
But not all of it. His left foot lands in the goop and begins to sink, the cool slime sucking at his toes. Malo leans forward, grabs at the hard ground with his hands and tries to pull himself out. Behind him, he can hear them coming closer. Can hear them stop at the edge of the pit.
"Warrior! Why do you run?" one of the hunters calls to Malo. "Ignos thinks poorly of your cowardice. Of your killing."
Malo turns back, sees that the hunters are holding their spears ready, though none appear about to throw one at him. Instead, the speaker is watching him while the other two scan the treetops. They've learned.
"You claim Ignos' favor on your way to slaughter a village of women and children?" Malo replies.
"Slaughter?" the hunter shakes his head. "Tasa told us only to take those that are willing. Those that are not go to great honor. You are the one that slaughters."
There's a moment where the hunter waits for Malo to push back on that claim, but the Charre warrior can't fight what's true, and stays silent.
"You could redeem yourself, Charre," the hunter continues a second later. "Give yourself to us. Join Ignos and atone for your crimes."
"That," Malo mutters to himself. "Is not going to happen."
With a yank and a slippery lunge, Malo gets his knees up out of the mud, pulls himself up.
"Another move, Charre, and your journey ends!" the hunter warns from behind him.
They're waiting for Malo to turn, and when he does, expectant looks paste on their faces. One who'd been watching the trees has his spear hefted, point glistening right towards Malo's heart, and the Charre warrior has no doubts the hunter could place it there before Malo made another step.
Which means it's time.
"Then I relent," Malo cries back to the hunters. "Come and take me."
; He sits on the soft dirt and leaves, his legs dangling towards the mud pit. Eyes tracking to the hunters, who, themselves, appear to be unsure of what to do with their new catch. After a few moments glancing towards each other - fishing for ideas that aren't coming - the lead hunter gestures for his two fellows to make the trip. They're all wearing small coils of tan, spindly rope on their waists and Malo knows they plan on wrapping his wrists tight together.
They'll never get that chance.
The lead hunter takes up aim with the spear, keeping its point hefted towards Malos' face as the other two begin to wade through the mud towards him. Once they're a meter along, the mud is up over their knees, making progress slow. Making them easy targets.
"Tasa should never have come back," Malo says, and at this the two coming hunters pause. "The village is not his to take."
There's no battle-cry as it happens. No cheer or call to Ignos. Just a rustle, a blur of movement, and then Naila and another woman - older, but made of iron - come around the bend and attack the lone hunter still on the back. The spears they're wielding are newer, better than the sticks the village had, and they've come directly from the bodies Malo left arrowed back in the glade.
The spears find new homes before the hunter even turns around, and the two women yank them free as the hunter collapses forward into the mud. Malo uses the moment too - he stands, slips the bow from around his shoulders and has another arrow aimed and ready. He catches Naila's face, full of triumphant fury, and shakes his head.
"Ignos demands we take them alive," Malo calls across the pit to her. "There's been too many dead today already."
The hunters, both still wielding spears, look at each other, at the angry women on the bank, and throw their weapons into the mud.
