by A. R. Knight
10 A Warrior Must Understand
Twenty-five left, the two hunters say once they're tied and sitting in front of a fire in the village.
"Take me to Ignos if you like," one says when Naila asks why he's being so forthcoming. "Why should I hide your own death from you? Tasa is going to take this village, and no amount of your clever tricks will stop him."
"They stopped you pretty well," Naila counters.
"We were stupid. Tasa told us we were approaching a village of women and children. He was wrong, but when we fail to return, Tasa will know what's happened. He won't make our mistake."
Malo's watching the exchange, his mouth full of tart pear. This ambush was a victory, but tomorrow Tasa's main force would arrive. They managed five today, and somehow had to claim five times that tomorrow. The thought should have had the entire village spooked, but Malo didn't see a single downcast stare, hear a sharp word, or feel a hint of fear coming from any of the other villagers.
"You didn't make a mistake," Naila's still going at the captive hunter. "We caught you. We beat you. And we'll do the same to the rest of your friends."
The hunter laughs at this and Malo's heard enough. They're not going to get anything useful from him. So Malo stands, taking a last bite of the pear, and goes behind the warrior. Naila, mouth open for another pointless retort, stops as she sees Malo draw his kukri and place the edge of the knife against the hunter's throat.
"Ignos doesn't need his sacrifices to speak," Malo whispers. "You want to keep your tongue, you'll keep quiet."
The hunter takes the hint and, with the help of a couple of wiry grandmothers who know how to tie a knot or two, Malo wraps the hunter to a tree at the edge of the village. Just to be safe, they take a scrap of cloth and gag the man too; a shout can carry a long ways in the jungle air and the last thing Malo wants to worry about now is the enemy they've already beaten.
"You didn't have to do that," Naila says later when Malo rejoins her at the fires.
"I wanted to." As he settles on the log, the tension drains away and Malo realizes how late it's getting.
Nomis, Ignos' sister, is high in a dark sky peppered with stringy clouds, casting her silvery light down through the flickering flames onto the sleeping villagers. Aside from the ones tasked with keeping watch - mostly children, high up in the trees and armed with hollowed callers, this odd collection of desperate fighters seems as content as Malo's own warriors would be the night before a battle.
And he's not the only one who's noticed. Naila's right there with him, but instead of curiosity, Malo sees compassion in the soft frown she's wearing. Worry, even.
"You've given them a chance they never had," Malo says. "They wouldn't be here without you, fighting for their home."
"They would be alive, though."
Malo laughs lightly. "Any true warrior would tell you that the chance to die for something is far better than living long for nothing. Without you, without this, where would they be? Running in the jungle? Already taken by Tasa or another like him?"
Naila doesn't dispute this, throws Malo a slight thank-you smile. "It wasn't something I asked for. I just felt so helpless, when your people took mine. I wanted to do something. To take control."
"How does it feel?"
Naila cocks her head at him.
"To take control?" Malo asks again.
"It's scary," Naila says after a stare into the fire. "Our village always had ways to flee, points to circle to if something happened like this. I never thought I'd arrive there and, because I held your spear, find myself in charge. But, too, the position gives me something to hold onto. A purpose."
When Naila says the word, it clicks in Malo's mind. The reason he's staying. He's got his spear - he could run hard and catch up with Jakkan and the others. Instead, he's staying here, risking everything for a group of people who, in other circumstances, would love to sacrifice him atop that Tier sitting behind Malo right now.
Purpose. He has one here, one that's greater than just following orders. Taking the prescribed routine and carrying it out to fulfill Jakkan or another's objective. No, this runs deeper. It's satisfying like a warm meal, energizing like Ignos rising on a cool morning.
The feeling sticks with Malo as he and Naila talk awhile longer, with Malo sharing stories of Damantum and its crowded streets, tall buildings, and crush of people. Until Malo notices Naila's eyes drifting shut, and makes the call to walk their dreams to morning.
And morning comes too soon.
11 A Warrior Must Fight
The hooting bursts of hollowed callers knock Malo from his sleep. It takes a second to realize the grim gray fog of early morning is coating everything, with Ignos not even visible through the trees.
As he sits up, Malo reaches with his right hand to pick up his spear from the ground. With his left, he draws the kukri, stands and sees that, for the moment, none of Tasa's hunters have reached the village. But the callers are hooting, so they must be close.
The jungle goes silent again. Some of the villagers, joining Malo outside the four stone houses, are surprised. A pair of mothers turn towards their direction, but Malo makes a single click with his tongue. Gets their attention.
"They have to stop or they'll be found," Malo whispers. "They know to run."
Malo doesn't say the other reason the callers could be silent.
Instead, Malo sees the crowd around him and uses it. Malo calls his sets to their assigned areas. They don't have formations, don't have grand plans, but there's one contingency they've trained for, and it's this one. The surprise attack. It wasn't Malo's idea, but Naila's. She's seen her own tribe do it before: stream out of the jungle at the break of dawn or the dead of night and take captives before they'd wake up.
Somehow, someway, the villagers remember their training. Young and old grab their sticks and spears, their stones and knives and get where they need to be. There's no walls around the village, so they use the houses instead, position themselves along the edges, where they can't be surrounded, where they can slide back behind cover.
A pair of lanky women take the pair of bows and scramble to the top of the Tier, normally a place of honor but now a tower from which they can let loose across the entire clearing. Malo takes a second to meet their glance once their get up on the Tier and raises his kukri in a salute.
There's no cover up there, and the archers know it.
Malo joins the group at the edge of the chief's house, directly across from the Tier and nearest the jungle area from where the calls were coming.
Eight villagers, six mothers and wives and a pair of children who appear to be no more than twelve seasons old stand with him. They acknowledge his arrival with a nod, one that he returns. Naila should be somewhere to his right, the two of them holding the center-most houses on the crescent arc made by the village structures.
Now Malo sheathes the kukri, holds the spear with both hands, and embraces the taut quiet to peer into the gray shadows beyond the ferns and trees. It's an eerie stillness, marked by the tight breathing around him and the low hoots of some far off bird. A cool fog lays across the ground, only just beginning to fade away as Ignos starts to cast his light upon the jungle.
Movement. Wisps of fog dragging along behind a shadow. Ten meters away. Close enough to--
The strike comes whistles from between a pair of vine-wrapped trees. It's a rock, and it finds a target next to Malo. Strikes her in the shoulder with a bone-bruising thwack, knocking the older woman to the ground. Immediately, the set's supporter grabs the woman and pulls her back under the cover of the chief's house.
"Get back! Around the front of the houses!" Malo shouts even as the woman falls beside him.
Tasa's playing a game of range, and they can't be in the open. Can't be easy targets.
More rocks begin to whiz through the trees as the villagers retreat. No arrows though, and the hunters are aiming low. Tasa's not trying to kill. Not yet.
They fall back around the house and Malo s
ets up near the open stone door, facing the Tier. Through the narrow opening, he watches the pair of archers on top of the tower. Watches as they put arrows to their bowstrings, as they begin to let loose.
Those first shots change everything.
Pointed arrows aimed at the head and chest mean deadly injury. They mean you're not concerned with Ignos. And once you've sacrificed honor, your opponent has no reason to keep theirs.
So Malo and Naila had told her people to give up their honor, because if Tasa won, the village wouldn't have anything at all.
As the arrows start to fly, Tasa's hunters issue a loud and angry roar, a specific word that Malo doesn't understand and yet knows all the same. The first hunter to yell sounds right outside the house, and his cry is echoed back into the forest many times over. There won't be rocks coming back at the villagers now. It'll be arrows, throwing spears and knives. What could have been a bloodless affair, what could have ended with the prisoners tied for sacrifice, will now be a massacre one way or another.
Malo hopes they're ready.
A dozen instincts take hold of Malo at once as he sees Tasa's hunters in front of him. Hours spent during the hot Damantum days, in dirt courtyards with Charre warriors arrayed around him. Captains wearing thick lion manes stand at four corners, barking orders at them; lunge with the left, twist and sweep the leg low, draw the kukri and stab. Over and over again until the motions become a swirling dance.
In the cool mists of the early jungle morning, Malo falls into that dance again.
He lunges towards the closest hunter, whose still drawing back his short bow and only just beginning to look away from the archers on top of the Tier towards Malo. The hunter's reaction is slow, far too slow.
Malo doesn't stab deep - to do so risks catching the spear on a rib or snaring it in muscle. A quick dart into the chest and then Malo's moving towards the right side of the line, twisting his body around, pivoting on his right foot, to whip the spear around towards the next hunter, whose arrow is drawn back, about to fire.
Malo's throw is faster. His spear crosses the two meters as the hunter releases his hold on the bowstring. The spear's point - thick, sharp black-glass - slices through the arrow as it begins its forward flight. The spear embeds itself in the hunter, but Malo's too busy completing his pivot to watch, bringing up the kukri in his left hand to meet the shadow streaking towards his face.
This hunter, coming from the jungle, comes at Malo with a Solare club. A chunk of thick wood with sharp rocks embedded all around the head, the weapons are both crude and terrible. Capable of both breaking bones and rending skin.
Malo's kukri meets the larger weapon in a crunching block that numbs Malo's wrist. The kukri, though, bites deep into the club's wood, sticking both weapons to each other and giving Malo a moment's stare into the haloed, deep blue tattoos coating the face of the hunter in front of him.
Malo's expecting to see hate there, anger, or maybe fear. The things he's seen in the eyes of tribes they've raided before. Instead, he finds determination. Steady focus. Then the moment's gone as Tasa's hunters and Naila's force of women and children clash together around them.
Malo knows he can't let the hunter get his club back, so instead of pulling the kukri out, Malo leans in as the hunter wrenches back. With his right hand, Malo punches forward, hits the hunter with a jab to the throat. He feels a snap, and the hunter drops the club, staggers backward.
Malo doesn't watch the rest.
He separates the two weapons and enters the rest of the fray, following the sounds of screams and flashes of instinct to guide him from one target to the next. The only strategy at this point is survival.
A battle has no clock, no defined duration. Malo marks its periods by moments of quiet between swinging weapons, bloody sprays and flying stones.
His line of devastation has moved beyond the chieftain's house, and while Malo's sporting a dozen cuts and bruises, while his arms are exhausted and the club is missing chunks of its body, he's still alive.
Which can't be said for many on both sides. Their bodies, wounded or dead, litter the ground around him, and it's hard to tell if Naila's villagers are winning. Malo only knows by the continuing battle cries that all of them have not lost.
Naila, though, still lives. Malo sees her in front of him, struggling near the last house, and it's easy to see why:
Tasa's there, and he has her pushed back against the side of the building. A pair of other hunters have set up a perimeter, staking out the fight with spears of their own.
Only it's not a fight.
Naila has heart, she's determined, but Tasa's an experienced hunter and, as Malo starts to head towards them, Tasa knocks away Naila's spear with his own. Levels the point of his weapon against her chest.
Malo can't hear what Tasa's saying, and he doesn't care. Two strides into his run, as Tasa's guarding hunters orient towards him, Malo plants his left foot into the soft ground and launches the battered club.
The weapon swirls through the air, tumbling end over end in a sloppy motion that nonetheless carries it into Tasa's back. The impact makes him stumble, and one of the stone shards cuts a long red line through Tasa's skin.
Naila uses the moment. She squeezes out from under Tasa's spear, slips her left leg between Tasa's own as the hunter glares back towards Malo, and the last thing Malo sees before he has to dodge the stabbing spears of Tasa's guards is the chief falling towards the ground.
Malo, now, only has a kukri and he dances back from the probing stabs of the hunters. They're playing it safe with their short spears, feeling out Malo's flexibility, knowing they have reach. Knowing they have numbers.
Knowing they have time.
The two of them try for another dual-stab, with the left hunter going low and the right aiming high. Again Malo hops back, but this time he lands on the front of his feet, bends his knees, and dives to the right, beneath the hunter's spear.
Malo rolls, pauses for a half-second to slash the back of the hunter's knee with his kurkri, and then keeps going. Pulls up to his feet a meter behind the two hunters, one of which is now kneeling, hands gripping his wounded, limp leg.
Much as he'd like to spare a glance back towards Naila to see how she's faring, Malo has one more hunter to deal with. This one's sporting twin arcs of red dye coming together across his chest in a circle - Ignos. He's also picked up his friend's spear, making it two long weapons against Malo's trusty kukri.
There's no waiting this time from the hunter, no caution. He jumps forward in a long lunge with his right, then tracks Malo's dodge with the spear in his left. Malo feels the burn as the second strike rakes across his shoulder, the hot wet gracing his skin.
It's desperation and blind reflex. Malo sweeps the kukri back and forth, tosses it from one hand to another as he blocks and dodges the seemingly endless stabs from the Solare hunter.
The spears score another cut, then a third along Malo's thigh and the Charre warrior knows he's not going to win this one. He can't get close. So Malo starts to backpedal, though he can't turn around to see where he's going.
Hopes that, maybe, he'll see something. Find some villager still alive, someone able to help.
The hunter, though, comes after him with a murderous gleam. There's no threats, no taunts, only the pure, focused joy of eliminating a threat.
They're both so immersed in the duel that neither one notices, for a moment, the sudden appearance of an arrow sticking out from the hunter's chest. The Solare only realizes its there when his swings suddenly fall short, when his left hand falters and the spear in it falls to the ground.
Malo meets his eyes, sees the hunter's confusion, and sees it fade a moment later as the fighter collapses.
Behind him, on to of the Tier the two fighters had wandered near, and sporting several deep injuries of her own, the one remaining archer gives Malo a quiet nod, and nocks another arrow.
Malo runs back to where Tasa and Naila were fighting - he doesn't have any idea how the rest
of the battle is going. It doesn't matter anyway - if the hunters are winning, he'll be dead. If the hunters lose, but Tasa kills Naila...
But what he finds as he rounds the corner is Naila standing - dirty, sweaty, and wounded, but standing over Tasa. Naila's holding the chieftain's spear, and its point is drawing a small stream of blood from Tasa's chest.
"You're going to leave, and you're going to tell your tribe and all the others that this village still lives. My tribe survives." Naila's more breathing the words than actually saying them, her shoulders shaking as she tries to keep her grip.
Malo comes closer, kukri in hand. His feet land on leaves and they crackle. Naila whips around, brings the spear up towards Malo, and Tasa takes advantage.
"Don't!" Malo tries to warn, but he's way too late.
Tasa sweeps his arm through Naila's left leg, picks her off her feet and dumps her down off of him. In a second, he's on her, wrestling the spear away.
In two seconds, Malo's diving into the chieftain, pushing him off Naila. Together, with Tasa managing to find Malo's left wrist and holding it, keeping the kukri away, they roll across the dirt and grass.
With his free hand, Malo goes for a swing at Tasa's face, but the chieftain slams his head forward instead, getting inside Malo's punch and slamming into Malo's chin. There's a warm splash in his mouth as Malo's teeth bite into his lip, and his skull rings as Tasa's blow drives Malo's head into the ground.
And in that moment, the chieftain rips Malo's kukri away, cutting his own hand in the process. Tasa juts his right knee into Malo's chest and the Charre feels what air he has left sputter out of his lungs.
"A cowardly attempt," Tasa whispers, turning the kukri for a stab. "Ignos would never approve."
Malo tries the same tactic, reaches for Tasa's wrist to keep the kukri away, but there's no strength. Tasa simply presses through the attempt.
"You would have made a bountiful sacrifice," Tasa whispers as he slides the knife against Malo's throat.
