by Matt Wallace
A Skrain captain steps between the two prisoners, resplendent in his armor stamped with the Crachian ant. He drunkenly waves an ornate goblet, rice wine splashing across Sirach’s face as he ceremoniously addresses those in attendance.
“Welcome to tonight’s entertainment, soldiers!”
His greeting is met with raucous cheers from the Skrain, as well as most of their servants.
Evie watches Sirach calmly lick the wine spatter from her cheek with a murderous grin. Her spirits have not been outwardly diminished, it seems.
“The rules are simple!” the Skrain captain announces, speaking to Sirach and Mother Manai, but booming his voice for the benefit of the audience. “There are none!”
That draws the drooling, sadistic laughter he was clearly seeking.
“But there is a prize for the winner,” he goes on. “The one of you that kills the other gets to take the loser’s body back to your Sparrow bitch as a taste of what’s to come for her and the rest of you rebel scum!”
The soldiers around them absolutely erupt at that proclamation.
Evie watches as Mother Manai and Sirach stare darkly at each other, seeming to almost forget the thousands screaming for their blood.
“Fair enough, isn’t it?” the captain says to the two forced combatants.
He draws two short, rusted swords that are more like machetes from either side of his belt, dropping them on the raked ground between Sirach and Mother Manai.
“Give ’em a good show, ladies!”
His drunken laughter is sickening.
The Skrain officer leaves them to it, practically dumping the remainder of his goblet’s contents over his face as he climbs out of the octagon.
Evie and Chimot exchange uneasy looks, neither of them knowing what to say or how to react. They can only watch.
Sirach is the first to crouch low and retrieve one of the blades. Her gaze is stony on Mother Manai as the Sicclunan shifts easily into a fighting stance.
Mother hesitates, but finally takes up the remaining weapon.
Evie watches the pair circle each other hesitantly with their rusty blades held at their sides.
At first it appears as though neither unwilling combatant will strike first. Then Sirach lunges forward, surprising her older opponent, and draws the edge of her machete’s blade across Mother’s cheek, spilling several tear trails of her blood.
Just as quickly, Sirach leaps back, holding her arms akimbo as if to challenge the older woman to retaliate.
The wine-soaked Skrain lap up the theatrics.
“She’s goading her,” Evie says knowingly. “She wants Mother to kill her.”
“I’ve never known her to be sentimental,” Chimot says, and though she is clearly trying to hide her feelings, her concern is evident.
Waiting for a counterattack that doesn’t come, Sirach finally steps forward again and prods Mother Manai in the chest with the flat end of her machete.
This time, however, Mother bats it away with her own blade and smashes the younger woman’s face with the stump of her arm. Sirach is sent stumbling backwards with a bloodied nose and a surprised look on her face that quickly morphs into anger.
“Shit,” Evie hisses, recognizing her lover’s expression.
Sirach charges forward in earnest and now the two of them lock horns for real, bodies becoming a mess of flailing, blade-wielding limbs and screaming heads. They manage to keep each other’s sword arms restrained, but each lands several body and head blows to the other.
Evie is lost as she takes in their struggle. There is no answer to this riddle. She cannot hope for any outcome. She cannot choose between watching her lover or her best friend die.
The flurry ends when Mother Manai purposefully ties up Sirach’s arms, doing her best to restrain her younger, stronger opponent.
In the next moment, both of their chins drop to their chests, hiding their faces from view. They continue to jockey for position, but it appears half-hearted to Evie. She suspects they are talking to each other, and though she cannot hear that conversation, she can venture a terrified guess.
The embattled conference ends with Sirach letting out a feral cry and shoving the older woman violently to the ground.
Rather than rain blows down upon her, Sirach steps back with an agonized expression. The pain splattered across her face isn’t physical, Evie is certain of that.
Evie looks over at Mother Manai to see her closest advisor achingly sit up.
Mother looks to Sirach, and the Sicclunan stares back, unwavering in her resolve.
Despite the noise and the waves of metal and flesh moving chaotically between them, Evie can see Mother Manai clearly in that moment.
She can even see in her friend’s eyes that the choice has been made.
Evie begins shaking her head, as if to dissuade Mother Manai from her chosen course of action, but neither of them can see their Sparrow General from inside the mock arena.
Mother rises from the dust raised around her prone form. She stares across the circle at Sirach with grim determination etched in the weathered lines of her face. Sirach stares back, uncertainty written in her posture and expression.
“She needs you more!” Mother Manai cries.
With that she surges forward, rushing Sirach and flinging herself onto the Sicclunan’s blade.
Sirach attempts to backpedal, but the fury and force of Mother’s charge catches her off-guard. The pressure created by their two bodies coming together so vigorously drives even her dull, decrepit makeshift gladiator’s blade deep into Mother Manai’s gut.
The killing blow sends the crowd into a frenzy, and shatters Evie’s heart into a thousand rough shards.
Mother grips Sirach’s shoulder with the hand she has left, encircling the Sicclunan with the stump of her other arm. Sirach carefully lowers Mother onto her back, still clutching the handle of the machete whose blade is buried in the other woman’s abdomen.
Evie can see Mother Manai’s lips still moving, though she doesn’t think any words are brought forth. Mother’s eyes are wide open, the light from the torches dancing inside of them, creating the illusion of life where life is quickly draining away.
Sirach clings to her until Mother’s lips stop moving, and that light from the torches is all that remains of the woman’s spark.
Sirach finally releases her hold on the machete’s handle. Mother Manai’s blood has run over her hand and down her arm. She stands, staring down at the wide-eyed corpse of the elder ex-Savage. There are no tears from Sirach, no blubbering of sorrow or fits of rage. The two women were convenient and ultimately temporary allies, not friends. The kill only hardens her expression, from what Evie can see in the firelight.
She does not look triumphant, or even relieved.
Evie does shed tears, as silently as she can, letting them spill over her cheeks while the rest of her remains as stoic and stiff as possible.
Chimot’s hand touches her shoulder, and Evie turns with a start.
“There’s nothing more we can do,” she urges Evie. “Not now.”
Sirach’s second wears a stony expression, but Evie sees very real sympathy in her eyes. Seeing that more than hearing her words anchors Evie. She knows Chimot is right again.
Evie allows herself one last look back at Mother Manai, the woman who taught her how to be a general, lying there in dirty rags with a rusty blade defiling her body.
She will never be able to make Crache pay enough. Evie knows that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
PART THREE RECALCULATIONS OF THE TONGUE
THEY’RE COMING
“AND WE’RE NOT READY,” EVIE says to the other leaders of the rebellion she started what now feels like a lifetime ago.
They are gathered around an ornate marble meeting table in the headquarters of the Tenth City’s Aegins, currently one of the most deserted structures in town. Its armory and larders have already been raided for the cause, but it remains a convenient place to host a large group in privacy and
comfort.
It certainly smells better than any building in the Shade.
Evie occupies the head of the table. She has donned her full set of Sparrow General armor, complete with its accursed cape. Ordinarily she would never bother with armor for a meeting such as this, but she found herself compelled as she dressed that morning. Perhaps it was because the last lecture Mother Manai subjected Evie to concerned the importance of the armor’s symbolism, including the damned cape.
Brio sits to Evie’s left, hands resting atop the knotted wood head of his cane. He watches her with the same look of sympathy and worry he’s had for her since she returned with the Sicclunan scouts from infiltrating the Skrain encampment.
Sirach and Chimot congregate to Evie’s right. The cuts on Sirach are beginning to heal, the bruises shifting in tone from almost black purple to a sickly yellowish-green. She and Evie have spoken very little since Sirach was released from the Skrain camp.
Evie feels no anger toward her. Sirach seems to have taken it upon herself to retreat from her, and Evie either hasn’t had the time or can’t seem to deduce how to reach out to her. They have communicated largely through Chimot, hence her presence on the war council.
Yacatek faces Evie from the opposite end of the marble slab. They haven’t spoken since that day on the street, when Evie watched the B’ors unearth an ancient ancestral knife buried there before those who massacred their people settled and built the city.
Evie remembers Yacatek asking her what the B’ors’ reward would be if the rebellion won. She still has no answer, but Evie knows Yacatek didn’t truly expect one.
Kellan and Talma join the rest as the leaders of their own private rebellion. Neither of them can fully appreciate the personal loss Evie and the others have suffered, but it is clear they’ve noticed the mood among the war council has changed drastically since taking up residence in the Tenth City.
What remains of the Elder Company, once the most battle-tested senior members of the Savage Legion, hunker together in one corner of the room. They look much as they did when Evie first laid eyes upon them. It was at the first Revel she attended, the night before her first battle, all of them huddled around their drinks and pleasure workers, laughing raucously.
She remembers her very first glimpse of Mother Manai from that evening, a mug of wine in her hand and a pretty young bare-chested man on her lap. She remembers a squat, ugly woman with terrible bowl-shaped hair who was so full of life and passion and strength despite her bondage and conscription into the Savage Legion.
The Skrain captain was true to his word after all. Sirach returned to the city with Mother’s body in tow. Though clearly a drunken sadist, the man either had a hidden and effective methodology or happened upon one that night. The sight of Mother Manai being wheeled through the city streets, even covered by the cloth Evie draped over her, demoralized her makeshift army deeply, particularly the former Savages.
Talma keeps a truly wretched garden in a patch of mostly infertile soil barely larger than a Skrain’s shield in the alley behind her butcher’s shop. It seemed as good a place as any in the city to bury Mother. Evie wished to find her people and return her body to them, but it was a fleeting, futile thought. It is very likely all of them will be buried here soon.
And if not, Evie would always know where to find Mother Manai.
The ceremony was brief, but everyone seemed to feel that it was appropriate. Yacatek and the B’ors attended, to Evie’s surprise. The ones who fought as Savages alongside Mother Manai respected her as a warrior, and the rest had heard stories of her fierceness and valor from their Storyteller.
Though she knew her for the shortest time among the rune-covered warriors of the rebellion, it was left to Evie to speak over the ground to which they committed Mother Manai’s body.
“I hope something beautiful grows here,” she’d managed through the tears strangling her voice. “Something that thrives where it shouldn’t, too tough to wilt. She would’ve liked that.”
Evie didn’t have it within her to say goodbye, and so she left it at that.
Looking at the survivors of the Elder Company now, bereft of Mother Manai’s light and energy and leadership, they simply seem like sad old men to Evie.
Lariat, ever the loud and brash master of ceremonies, looks as though someone has let the air out of a bladder. He curls his thick lips under that overgrown broom mustache of his, gaze shifting about grouchily.
Bam has retreated even further inward than he usually resides, hugging his colossal mallet the way a child might clutch a straw-stuffed doll.
Diggs is foregoing greasing every moment with his customary charm. Even his admirable coif of increasingly salty hair is neglected and out of place.
Evie can’t help feeling she has failed them every bit as much as she failed Mother Manai.
“We’re not ready,” she repeats to her battle-hardened war council. “And we won’t ever be, no matter how much time we have.”
“Then what’s the answer?” Chimot asks. “Is there even one?”
Sirach says nothing, though for the first time in days she looks directly at Evie.
Evie suspects she already knows what’s coming.
“We have to leave the city,” Evie announces. “We have to march on the Skrain host now, before they begin siege preparations outside the walls.”
None of her comrades speak at first. Several of them look uneasily at one another.
Kellan and Talma are the deepest struck. They seem totally lost in the news.
“I suppose,” Sirach says, “for the sake of discussion, I’ll be the one to point out that marching on the Skrain is tantamount to suicide. Not that I’m objecting, you understand.”
Evie thinks she spots the ghost of a grin threatening Sirach’s lips. She’d like to feel bolstered by it, but there is only fear and regret presently bubbling within her.
“Why would we leave the safety of these walls after we fought so hard to claim them?” Talma asks, fairly.
“I’m neither ordering nor asking you and the people of the Shade to do anything. You fought for yourselves, not for us. We may be natural allies, but I will not attempt to conscript you into anything. It’s for your people our forces need to fight on the field, and not in these streets.”
Evie glances at Brio, who nods somberly.
“If the Skrain lay siege to the Tenth City,” she says, addressing them all, “they will destroy it and everyone in it.”
“I can’t contend to be terribly moved by that,” Sirach replies, and then looks to Kellan and Talma. “Nothing against you two, personally.”
“Of course not,” Talma replies with mock sincerity.
“I agree with the Sicclunan, for once,” Lariat rings in gravely. “But not because I don’t give a spit for the Shade. It’s the rest of ’em I don’t give a spit for, all them well-fed Gen types and all them parchment-pushing arbiter types in their marble palaces.”
“They aren’t exactly rallying to support us, General,” Diggs adds.
“There is no separating the two,” Evie insists. “The Shade, the Gen Circus, the Citadel, they are all part of the same city. The Skrain won’t distinguish when they’re leveling every building in sight with their siege weapons and hurling fire over the walls.”
“I wasn’t distinguishing either,” Sirach informs her.
“Do we condemn the people of the Tenth City to die out of spite?” Evie asks her coldly. “Because that’s what we’d be doing. We have no hope of holding this city, or breaking a Skrain siege. Will what’s left of the Sicclunan forces come to rescue us, Sirach?”
“No,” she admits readily.
“No one is coming to help us,” Evie tells them all. “There will be no resupply, no reinforcement. Even if we can successfully defend the walls somehow, what happens when hunger sweeps through the city? When the people start eating one another? What we have, this army we’ve assembled, right here and now, this is it. This is the only battle we’ll ever fight. If
we seal ourselves inside these walls, we turn this city into a tomb.”
None of them, including Sirach, seem willing or able to argue with that.
“What’s your plan, then?” Sirach asks her.
“We will rally and marshal our forces in the night and attack them at dawn.”
“They’re watching every move we make, day and night,” Chimot says. “We have no hope of taking them by surprise.”
“No, but we’re a lighter and faster army. We can use that. We can rally and strike before they have time to field their full strength. They are expecting us to wait here for them. They think they have all the time in the world. They’re building their siege towers and drinking themselves stupid. We saw that with our own eyes. They are not preparing for a frontal assault, much less one hitting them right now. We can catch them off-guard enough to split their force and fight them in waves. It’s our only chance. If we can fight our way to the camp we might be able to send them scattering.”
“If they hold our initial attack long enough to give the rest of the host time to mobilize, we’ll be annihilated.”
“Then we don’t let them hold us.”
Sirach still looks unconvinced. Evie shifts her gaze to Chimot.
“You wanted to light some fires. Let’s fight our way back into that camp and give you your chance.”
Chimot grins despite herself. “I see what you like about her,” she mutters to Sirach.
“You can put as much verve behind it as you can muster,” Sirach says. “This has a one in a thousand chance of succeeding.”
“We only have to break their line!” Evie insists. “That’s what Savages do.”
“I’m not a Savage,” Sirach replies. “And Sicclunans have learned the value of striking and evading. We only meet the Skrain when absolutely necessary, and never with our full force. As you said, this is all we have. If we are defeated here, then this thing you’ve created is defeated. And my people will be too weakened to recover.”