by Evan Winter
He’d not seen his father that concerned in a long time. It meant Aren didn’t think they’d hold Daba. It meant there was a damned good chance they’d all die.
“No…,” Tau said. “Not because of Lekan. Not because of that coward.”
He rushed to the closest bit of brush and hid his practice blade and ration sacks. He belted on his sharpened bronze sword, the one that had belonged to his father’s father, and gripped its hilt. He felt the etchings his grandfather had made, spelling out the family name in a spiral that wound its way from pommel to guard. “Solarin,” it read.
Steadied and feeling ready for the task ahead, Tau ran down the mountain, in the opposite direction his father had gone. He went to find Jabari. Lekan might be craven, but Jabari was as decent as Nobles came. He’d help. He’d tell his mother to order the keep’s men to go to Daba, and that would stop Tau’s father from getting killed.
Before long, the Onai’s keep, the largest building in Kerem, came into view. It was two floors tall, had a central courtyard, and was surrounded by an adobe wall that was nine strides high. The adobe was smooth and that spoke to the Onai’s wealth.
“Eh, what’re you about, Tau?” a reedy voice asked from above.
Tau looked to the top of the fortifying wall. It was Ochieng, one of the Ihagu assigned to be a keep guard. Ochieng had always been a blustering oaf, and, a full cycle older than Tau, he’d already reached manhood. He hadn’t passed the test to be part of the real military and had come back from the southern capital with his head low and prospects grim.
He’d been lucky; Tau’s father spoke on his behalf, and on the strength of Aren’s word, the keep guard took Ochieng as one of their own. Most of Ochieng’s family were either dead or Drudge, and if Aren hadn’t vouched for him, Ochieng would have followed in their footsteps. As it stood, Tau felt owed.
“Open the gate, Ochieng. I don’t have time.”
“Don’t have time, neh? Where’s your hurry?”
“Hedeni raid,” Tau said, hoping the news would shock the guard to action.
“Just heard. What’s it got to do with you?”
“I have to see Jabari.”
“He know you’re here?”
“What do you think?” Tau said.
“Don’t know what you’re fooling about,” Ochieng muttered, disappearing behind the wall. A moment later, Tau heard the heavy latch on the bronze gate swing up and away.
“Hurry. In you get.”
“Thanks, Ochieng.”
“Didn’t open the gate for you. Tell Aren I said hello.”
Leaving the gate behind, Tau came to a juncture in the keep’s paths and stopped. Jabari could be almost anywhere, and, worried he was making the wrong choice, he went toward the keep proper and Jabari’s rooms.
He moved through the keep’s yards at a brisk walk, head down, trying not to draw the attention of any of its handmaidens or administrators. Lessers in the keep tended to be women or, if male, they were higher caste than Tau. He’d stand out and didn’t want to be stopped or, worse, prevented from getting to Jabari.
He sped up, eyes on the dirt, anxious to get where he was going, which was why he came near to knocking his younger half sister on her ass.
“What in the Goddess’s… Tau?” said Jelani, unable to keep the surprise from her face. “Why are you here?”
“Hello, Jelani.”
“Don’t ‘hello’ me.”
“Uh… how’s Mother?”
“That’ll depend,” Jelani said, glaring at Tau like she’d found a maggot in her rations, “on what I tell her about seeing you here.”
“I’m looking for… Jabari asked to see me.”
Jelani squinted at him. “Jabari?”
“Yes, there’s a raid in the mountains… the hedeni—”
“He’s in the bathhouse. Find him and leave, before I tell my mother.”
Our mother, Tau thought, inclining his head and hurrying back to the path he hadn’t selected. He swore he could feel Jelani’s beetle-black eyes on his back as he went. She hated having a half-low as a sibling. That’s how she thought of him, half-low.
It made Tau want to yell that he was as High Common as she was. Status came from the woman who bore you, and his name was Tafari, just like hers. It wouldn’t have done any good. Jelani knew their mother wouldn’t have anything to do with him, or Aren.
Pushing his sister out of mind, Tau stepped up to the bathhouse, opened its door, and was hit by a blast of hot scented air. “Jabari?” he said into the fog. He didn’t dare go in. “Jabari?”
“Tau? That you?” said a familiar voice. “What are you about?”
He’d have only one chance to convince Jabari to help. “There’s a fight coming,” Tau said, “and if we don’t do something, the people your family pledged to protect will die.”
Tau heard water slosh around, and then Jabari appeared through the steam, towering over him, stark naked.
“What’s this?”
Lekan hadn’t told Jabari about the raid. Tau corrected that, telling him everything, then begging him to act. “Go to your mother,” he said. “She’s the umbusi; tell her the defense of Daba will fail without more men.”
“Tau, I’m the second son. Lekan’s the one being groomed to command our fief’s men. She won’t go against him on my word.”
“Jabari—”
“She won’t, Tau.”
“We have to do something!” Tau said, struggling to keep his voice respectful.
“I know, I know. There’s a fight coming and my family must protect the people of Kerem.” Jabari clapped Tau’s chest with an open palm. “I have it.”
“Have what?”
“A plan,” Jabari said.
RAID
“There,” Tau said, pointing at a flickering light in the distance. “Do you see it?” The light was bright against the evening’s darkness, but he was never sure how far Jabari could see.
“I see it,” Jabari said. “They’re burning Daba.”
He picked up the pace, and Tau, lungs raw from running, struggled to keep up with his friend’s longer strides.
He couldn’t believe he’d gone along with Jabari’s plan and tried not to think about what they’d find when they got to the hamlet. “What if this doesn’t work?” Tau asked. “What if they don’t come?”
“They’ll come.”
Before leaving the keep, Jabari had gone to its barracks and told everyone he was going to Daba to defend the hamlet. The highest-ranking guard in the room tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t be swayed.
It was clever. Jabari couldn’t countermand Lekan’s orders, but the guards were bound, on pain of death, to protect every member of the Onai family. By letting them know he was putting himself in harm’s way, Jabari was forcing them to organize and send an honor guard to protect him. Tau hoped the extra men would be enough.
“Swords out!” Jabari said as they came over a hill. Tau pulled his weapon free, looked down on the hamlet, and froze.
Daba sat on a plateau with natural borders. The most obvious border was four hundred strides directly ahead. There, the plateau became mountainous again and the rock continued its climb to the clouds. To Tau’s right, and roughly eight hundred strides away, was the hamlet’s central circle. Beyond it, the plateau ended in a series of steep but scalable cliffs that dropped toward the valley floor. On Tau’s left were the raiders.
The hedeni had come from the paths leading to Daba’s growing fields, and they had burned half the hamlet already. The flaxen roofs of the larger houses were on fire, and in the night’s dark, the flames silhouetted the fleeing women, men, and children of Daba.
The Ihagu, Aren’s men, were fighting a series of skirmishes between the hamlet’s tightly packed homes and storage barns. They were outnumbered and losing ground but could only go so far. The hedeni were herding everyone to the cliffs.
Tau didn’t know what he’d expected, but this wasn’t it. Scarred and disfigured, marked by the God
dess’s curse, the hedeni held either bone spears or bone-and-bronze hatchets and chopped at the Chosen like woodcutters. They used no recognizable fighting stances and their attacks followed no rhythm or sequence. Worst of all, the Ihagu had been reduced to fighting just as savagely. Both sides hacked at each other, and every so often someone fell back, dead, wounded, or maimed.
“What is this?” Tau asked, his voice too low for Jabari to hear.
“There,” Jabari shouted, running down, not waiting to see if Tau followed.
Tau tracked his path and saw three of the raiders harrying a woman and child. Jabari yelled, charged in, and Tau chased after him.
By the time he reached the flats, Jabari had already engaged two hedeni. They were circling to his sides, trying to get between him and the woman and child.
Tau went for the third savage, arcing his sword in a blow meant to decapitate, but the wretch brought up a hatchet and blocked the strike. The raider, a mass of dirty hair and mud-caked skin, blundered forward, swinging the weapon low, aiming for Tau’s thigh.
Tau leapt back, fear lending him speed, and the hatchet’s blade hissed past his kneecap, a hairsbreadth from taking his leg off at the calf. Blood pumping and desperate to shift the fight’s momentum in his favor, Tau attacked. He stabbed out with his blade, aiming for the heart, and, as he’d been taught, kept his eye on the target, ready to react when the hedena dodged.
The collision, then, was a surprise. Tau’s blade plunged from tip to hilt, into and through his opponent’s chest. The savage had made no move to avoid the sword’s point at all.
Tau didn’t understand. The lunge had been obvious. It wasn’t a serious killing blow. Anyone with decent training would have avoided it.
He looked into the face of the person he’d stabbed. The woman’s eyes were big and wide, staring off at something in the distance. Her mouth, full-lipped, formed a gentle O, and the raider’s hair, dreaded by lack of care, hung down her scarred face.
Tau pulled back in revulsion, but his blade wouldn’t come free. The woman—or girl; he couldn’t tell—cried out as the bronze ripped her insides.
She reached for Tau, perhaps to hold him close, hoping to halt the blade’s bitter exit, and her fingers, bloody already, touched his face. She tried to speak, lips flecked with spittle, but her life ran its course, and she sighed before the weight of her lifeless body pulled Tau to the ground.
“Tau!” Jabari’s voice sounded far away. “Are you hurt?”
“No… I—I hurt her, I think,” Tau heard himself say.
“Get up. More are coming. We have to make it to the rest of our men,” Jabari said. “Is that your blood?”
“Blood?”
“Your face.”
Jabari and the woman and child were staring at him. The two hedeni men who had faced Jabari were dead.
“It’s not me,” Tau told them. “Not my blood.”
“We have to go,” said Jabari.
Tau nodded, struggled to jerk his blade free from the hedena woman’s body, took a step, doubled over, and retched. Nothing came up. He retched again, his stomach still heaving when he forced himself upright. The child was staring at him. He wiped his mouth with the back of his blood-streaked hand. “Fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”
Jabari looked Tau over and began moving. “We have to go.”
Tau followed, looking back once. The woman he’d fought lay in the mud like a broken doll. He’d never killed someone. He was shaking. He’d never—
“This way,” said Jabari as the four of them weaved between huts and buildings, doing their best to avoid the fighting all around them.
Jabari was heading toward the barricade that the Ihagu had set up at the edge of the hamlet’s central circle. They’d used overturned wagons, tables, even broken-down doors to block the paths that led to it. They were making a stand. They wouldn’t last. There were too many hedeni.
“In here!” Jabari shoved the woman, who had picked up and was carrying the child, through the open door of a hut. He dashed in after her and Tau was right behind.
The hut was far larger than the one Tau shared with his father. It must belong to a High Harvester. Maybe even Berko, he thought, as the first hedena warrior burst through the doorway.
The man, hatchet out, made for Jabari. He didn’t see Tau and Tau sliced at him, cutting into his arm. Hollering in pain, the raider stumbled into the nearest wall, and Jabari stabbed him in the gut.
The next hedena through the door had a spear. It was a woman. Tau knew the hedeni fought women alongside men. He knew it like he knew he had ten toes, but seeing a second female fighter gave him pause.
He should attack. He didn’t. She thrust her spear at him and it would have taken out his throat if Jabari hadn’t reacted, knocking it from her hands.
She drew a dagger from her belt. Tau remained rooted, noticing instead that she wore no armor. She had on an earth-toned wrap that covered her breasts and looped round her back, where it dove into loose and flowing pants. She was sandaled and her hands were bangled, the golden metal bouncing on slim wrists as she flicked her dagger at Jabari.
Jabari danced back. She came forward and Tau saw his chance. He was behind her. He just had to kill her.
On weak knees, Tau stepped forward and swung his sword as hard as he could, sending the flat of his blade hammering into the side of her head, knocking her down. Jabari followed up. He kicked the dagger from her hand and leapt on her, pressing his sword to her neck.
“You speak Empiric?” Jabari snarled. “How many ships did you land on our shores? How many raiders?” He pressed the point of his sword into her neck, drawing blood. “Speak or die!”
She looked frightened but spat in Jabari’s face, closed her eyes, and began to spasm. Jabari scurried back, making distance, as her skin, already scarred by the Goddess’s curse, bubbled and boiled. Blood erupted from her nose, ears, mouth, and eyes, and she began to scream and scream and scream. Then, like a candle blown, her life was gone, snuffed out.
The Lesser woman let out a choked gasp and turned away, holding the child closer. The child was crying. Jabari was still as stone, watching the dead savage with wide eyes.
He turned to Tau, mouth open, brow furrowed. “Demon-death,” he said. “Your father told us it’s what they do when captured. I didn’t believe it.”
Tau could think of nothing worth saying.
Jabari stood, wiped the savage’s spit from his face, and stumbled away, using the wall for support. Tau, along with the woman and child, followed. Jabari bashed out a shuttered window at the back of the building and they crawled out of it, emerging in the middle of a circle of tightly packed homes.
In front of them was a storage barn, and they were still a hundred strides from the Ihagu’s barricade. Jabari tried the barn’s door. They hadn’t been seen and could go through the long building. With luck, they’d come out a short run from the barricade and the rest of their people. Jabari broke the door’s lock and they went in.
The storage barn was large, but its interior was tight, crammed with shelves, most empty. That was bad. It was almost Harvest, and if the storehouse was any indication, the Omehi would have trouble feeding their people.
As they slunk through, Tau began to have trouble breathing.
“What are you doing?” Jabari asked.
He couldn’t stop panting and felt dizzy. “Too close,” he said about the shelves and walls.
“What?”
Tau squeezed his eyes shut. It didn’t help and he couldn’t get enough air. He stopped moving, unable to keep going, when a cool hand slipped into his.
“It’s a few more steps,” the Lesser woman told him. “Keep your eyes closed. I’ll guide you.”
Tau nodded and stumbled after her.
“Ready?” asked Jabari.
Tau, still nauseous, opened an eye. They’d walked the length of the storehouse and were at its front doors. “Hurry,” he said, wanting nothing more than to be outside.
“If
the Goddess wills, we’ll have a clear run for the barricade,” Jabari said. “We make it there and we’re safe.”
Tau wasn’t sure anywhere in Daba could be called safe. He’d seen how many hedeni were out there.
“Ready?” Jabari asked again.
The woman, eyes wide, nodded.
“Go!” Jabari yelled, kicking the door open.
Tau pitched his way through, fixated on being free of the barn, and ran into a startled hedena. He bowled the man over and Jabari stabbed the downed savage. There were four, maybe five other raiders, but they were fighting Ihagu. Jabari joined the fight, and Tau, head spinning, grabbed the woman’s hand, pulling her away.
The barricade was just ahead and he made for it. The woman, carrying the child, was slowing him, and he could picture raiders running them down. Gritting his teeth, he tightened his grip on the woman’s hand and pulled her after him. The men behind the barricade saw him coming. Tau thought he recognized one of them, but the blood caked on the man’s face made it hard to tell.
As they hit the barricade, the man shoved aside a pile of overturned chairs, making a climbable path for Tau and his two charges.
“Your turn now,” the bloody-faced Ihagu yelled, after the woman and child were behind the ramshackle wall.
“Tendaji?” Tau asked.
“Tau?” said Tendaji. “What are you doing here? Never mind, climb up!”
“Can’t. Jabari is still out there.”
“Jabari’s here?” The shock in Tendaji’s voice spoke volumes.
Tau nodded, and with fear grasping at his guts, he forced himself to turn and run back to the fighting. He didn’t have to go far. They were coming to him.
Jabari was bleeding through the arm of his gambeson and the other warriors carried one of their own.
“I’m well,” said Jabari, waving off Tau’s concern. “Let’s get behind the barricade.”
Tau helped carry the wounded Ihagu to the wall.
“Jabari?” Tendaji said, mouth dropping open. Tau had warned him, but actually seeing one of the heirs to the fief in the middle of a raid must have been too much for him to accept.