by Evan Winter
Tau was still in the path, in the fake city in the Crags, and yet he was not. It was as dark as night, but he could see, though what he saw made him wish he couldn’t. The Enervator was there, but she was cloaked in shadows as dark as dragon scale. She was hidden. The others, though, shone bright with the golden energy of their souls, and this had attracted demons.
The closest one was a mass of shard-like bones that pierced the shell it had in place of skin. Its eyes were bulbous and red and its razor teeth were as long as Tau’s fingers. It shambled toward him and he scrambled back. It gave him no thought, choosing to fall on the Indlovu Tau had been fighting. The young Noble opened his mouth to scream, but the beast had already clamped its jaws around his face and ripped the man’s nose, lips, and tongue away. The Noble fell, what was left of his mouth open but voiceless, eyes darting in terror.
Tau took another step back, desperate to hide, desperate to get away. He could feel the Enervator’s hold on his soul, locking it to this evil place. He sought her out but had lost sight of her among the swirling mist.
“Tau!” It was Yaw, his voice a thin and distant thing, like a deadened echo. Tau looked over. Yaw was only a dozen strides away, suffused with a golden glow. Tau looked down at himself; he was lit too. He moved to go to Yaw and held. A demon had found his sword brother.
The thing shared nothing with the one still feeding on the Indlovu. It was squat, not quite reaching Yaw’s shoulder, but it bristled with muscles, like a perverse rendering of an Enraged Ingonyama. It snarled at Yaw, its thick lips dripping ichor and revealing blunt, crushing teeth. Yaw fell backward, calling for help with his underworld-muted voice, and the demon went for him.
Tau resisted every impulse he had and ran away from his fear and into combat. He raised his strong-side sword, surprised to realize he still had it, and swung it onto the neck of the demon attacking Yaw. The blade struck true, biting into the meat of the thing. It howled, reared, ripped the sword from Tau’s grip, and clawed at him, catching his forearm and tearing away the skin there like it was paper.
The pain was instant and furious. Tau drew his arm back, near to blacking out from agony, and lashed out with his remaining sword, slicing the demon across its chest. It reared, roared, dropped to all fours, and charged him. Tau braced himself, thrust hard for the place he imagined the creature’s heart to be, and was bowled over as the demon crashed into him, sending them both tumbling along the swampy muck of Isihogo.
Tau lost his weapon and his sense of up or down. He tried to kick the demon away but was like a child in its grip. He prayed he’d killed it with his last sword thrust, but its eyes centered on him and it dove for his neck.
Tau raised a blocking arm to stop it. It clamped its jaws around his elbow and bit down, crushing through skin and bone. He screamed as the pain, horrifying in its intensity, hit. Then the agony threatened sanity itself when the beast swung its head back and forth, jerking his whole body about and tearing his destroyed limb to shreds as the light came back to the world.
“Tau! Tau!” Yaw was standing over him.
Tau scrambled away, his back banging into the wall behind him.
“Run! It’s on me.” Tau shouted, looking at his arm and expecting to see a ruin. It was whole. He searched himself for the pain that had tormented him. There was nothing.
“Tau, listen to me, we’re out,” said Yaw. “You… you saved me from it.”
Tau took a steadying breath and, wide-eyed, looked around the path. The Enervator was on her knees, crying. The last Indlovu Tau had fought was scrubbing his hands across his face and gibbering on the ground in front of her. The one Oyibo and Chinedu had faced was lying in a fetal position, his body wracked with tremors.
“What in the Goddess’s name,” Tau said, his voice shaking.
“She held us too long,” said Yaw.
Tau stood on weak legs and took a step toward the Gifted, ready to risk the wrath of the citadel, Nobles, and isikolo. He would give this incompetent wretch a piece of his mind. She heard him coming and looked up from her knees. She was young, more child than woman, and she looked small, lost, scared. She was a… she had been a Low Common, and the curses Tau had been ready to sling slipped away.
“What did you do?” he asked, but she just wept.
Yaw came over. Through her tears, the Gifted saw him and raised an arm as if to ward him off or maybe cast another wave of enervating energy. It was too soon. Her powers wouldn’t be back, but Tau couldn’t help it and backed away in fear.
“None of that, Lady Gifted,” Yaw said as his fingers brushed the top of her shoulder. “I’ve touched you. You’re out of the contest, neh?”
She didn’t speak, but she did nod.
“Brothers,” Yaw said, “let’s get back to the circle. We’ll help the others and tell them the Enervator is down.”
“I can’t,” said Oyibo.
“What?” asked Yaw.
“Oyibo took the Goddess’s mercy before… before the rest happened,” Chinedu explained. “This one”—he indicated the quaking Indlovu—“he was… a thing got him and it…”
Tau had trouble finding his voice. “All right, us three, then, let’s go,” he said, gathering up his fallen swords.
“Lady Gifted,” Yaw asked, “you’ll see to the Indlovu here? You’ll call for the aqondise when we go?”
She didn’t answer and her eyes were shut tight.
“I’ll call out,” Oyibo assured them.
“Let’s go,” Tau said a second time, and the three men trotted down the path, back the way they had come and toward more fighting.
SKIRMISH
When Tau emerged from the path and into the harsh light of the wide-open circle, he counted seven Indlovu fighting just eleven of his sword brothers. The fighting was fierce and not going well for Scale Jayyed. The skirmish had broken down into smaller contests, and six Indlovu fought in pairs. The seventh was backed into a corner, swinging at the three Lessers harrying him. Hadith was on his feet, but the scale’s inkokeli had taken cuts and had an angry welt on his forehead.
“The Enervator is ash!” Tau shouted into the circle, trying to give his scale hope. Turning to the sword brothers with him, he gave orders. “Help where you can. We finish this!” he said, before running to Hadith’s aid.
“For… the Goddess!” Chinedu cried out.
Hadith was with two other Ihashe, and the three of them were fighting two Indlovu.
“I have left,” Tau told the three men as he joined the fight.
The Indlovu on the left was granite thick and had a neck like a barrel. His dark skin shone with sweat and his face was the type that looked like it always smelled of offal.
“He’s their inkokeli,” Hadith warned. “I’ll stay.”
“Go!” Tau told him. “Finish the other. He’s mine.”
Hadith held position.
“Hadith!” Tau urged.
Hadith shook his head at Tau but did as he was bid, moving to engage the other Indlovu with his two sword brothers.
The inkokeli used the reprieve to catch his breath. “You’re a fool, Lesser, to try me alone.” He raised his sword. “I am Zesiro Opio, Greater Noble of the Opio family in Palm, a second-cycle Indlovu of the citadel and inkokeli of Scale Oyana.”
Tau pointed the ends of his dual swords at the man’s broad chest. “I am a Common of Kerem and you will beg me for mercy.”
“Nceku!” Zesiro said, attacking.
Tau did not back down. He gave no ground. He met Zesiro Opio in the circle of the Crag’s fake city and went to war. Their blades flashed and flickered, faster and faster, as the men wielding them lunged, spun, deflected, and parried.
Zesiro, Tau realized, was a brilliant fighter. Zesiro was good enough to beat him, if he had not already fought under the hot sun on a long morning against overwhelming numbers and the well-trained men of Scale Jayyed.
In training, Tau had taken himself to the breaking point every day. Every day he pushed further than the day befor
e, making himself a little stronger, a little harder, a little faster. The sword was his religion and, a devout disciple, he sacrificed to it without end.
So, amid a melody of metal, Tau Solarin and Zesiro Opio burned across the circle grounds like wildfire, each man reaching deeper than he had ever done before. One man fought, ready to die. The other battled, thinking it impossible to lose. But thinking a thing has never been enough to make it so, and Tau could see fear set in when Zesiro Opio realized he wasn’t winning.
The Noble couldn’t keep up and Tau’s blades kept getting through. Desperate and in pain, Zesiro raised his shield, hiding behind it, unable to slow the onslaught as Tau’s blades bashed the bronze disc from every angle. Zesiro yelled for help as Tau, merciless, came up and under the bronze disc, cracking the hand there and breaking noble fingers.
Zesiro howled, his sword flying from his ruined hand, and Tau did not stop. He increased his pace, refusing to let the Goddess’s mercy take this man’s beating from him.
“Zesiro Opio! Greater Noble!” Tau roared, smashing his blade against the cheek plates of the Greater Noble’s helmet, breaking the bones beneath and cracking the Indlovu on his temple. “A name? A caste? That won’t shield you from me!”
Zesiro Opio did not cry out in pain and he did not beg. Instead, he slumped forward and flopped to the ground, unconscious. Tau, trembling, shouted his victory at him, seeking satisfaction, finding none. He licked his lips, no spit to wet them, and looked for the next fight.
Hadith and the two men with him had downed their lone Indlovu. The man was on his knees and had a gash on his head. He gawped at Tau, flinching when Tau stepped in his direction. Tau ignored him. The man had surrendered. He was nothing.
There were two pockets of fighting left, three Indlovu and nine Scale Jayyed men. The odds were in their favor and Hadith pointed to two Scale Jayyed initiates fighting a single Indlovu. The four of them rushed over, and the Noble, seeing the count at six to one, surrendered. The six sword brothers joined Chinedu, Yaw, and Runako, who had been losing to the last two men of Scale Oyana.
They surrounded the holdouts, forcing the two Indlovu to go back to back. Tau, too tired to be effective but refusing to give in to his exhaustion, pushed forward.
“It’s done,” Hadith called out to the Nobles before Tau could engage the men. “We’re nine, you’re two. The Enervator is out of the contest and your inkokeli is down.” Hadith pointed to Zesiro Opio in the dirt. Seeing Opio broke the smaller of the two Nobles. He looked ready to drop his sword.
“We don’t lose to you!” the older and bigger of the two Nobles said.
“Not usually,” said Hadith. “Today is different.” He waved his nine men forward and they came on, swords bristling.
“I’ll take mercy from no Lesser,” the larger Indlovu told Hadith.
“Nor should you,” Hadith said. “Only the Goddess grants mercy. It’s Her I’d like you to ask.”
“Lutalo…,” cautioned the younger Indlovu.
“Shut it,” Lutalo told the man at his back.
“Goddess’s mercy,” Lutalo’s sword brother said, lowering his sword.
“To ash with you,” Lutalo swore at his fellow. “Rot in Isihogo, all of you!” He raised his sword to fight, and the circle of men, swords ready, pushed closer. Lutalo eyed the men, grimaced, and threw his sword down.
“Say the words,” Hadith told him.
Swordless or not, Lutalo looked like he was about to take a run at Hadith. “Goddess’s mercy,” he growled, and the circle of Lessers erupted in cheers.
LEGEND
Tau and the rest of the scale stayed to watch the next skirmish. Emboldened by the efforts of their southern brothers, the Northern Isikolo fought hard. At times it looked like they might force a draw, but the citadel Enervator waited, holding back her powers until the northern scale was crowded together.
She caught sixteen men in her blast, and the Indlovu ripped through the rest of the scale, punishing the Ihashe for daring to believe they had a chance. The match ended with more serious injuries than was typical for a skirmish.
Tau and his sword brothers attended to the northerners. They carried men to the nearby infirmary and helped those who had been sent to Isihogo to recover as best they could.
The loss, and the Indlovu’s brutality, cooled the heat the men felt from their win. But as Tau and Hadith carried a northern Ihashe, his leg broken by an Indlovu blade, the fires burned again.
“I saw you fight,” he said to Tau and Hadith. “By the Goddess, I’ve never felt so proud to be a Lesser.”
Hadith smiled so large, Tau thought his face might split.
“I wanted to win. I fought to win,” the northerner said, “because you showed us we can.”
Tau grunted, which the man took as encouragement. The northerner raised his voice, calling out to the men on the battlefield and beyond. “Victory! No enemy stands before the rage of dragons! Where we fight—”
Tau wondered if the man had taken a blow to the head, when the rest of the Ihashe, to a man, shouted the response to the ancient Omehi battle cry. “The world burns!”
The Indlovu, stowing their gear as they readied to leave for Citadel City, watched the shouting Lessers, a strange look on their Noble faces.
“The world burns! The world burns! The world burns!”
As the chanting broke down to general cheering and hooting, the man with the broken leg clapped Tau on the back. “They’ll splint this and then I’m celebrating with you!”
“Celebrating?” Tau asked.
“In Citadel City, we’ll drain the drinking houses dry!”
Hadith had that grin on his face again. “Yes, we must. What is Uduak always saying? I have a thirst!”
They dropped the northerner off at the infirmary, promising not to leave without him. Hadith gathered up the rest of the scale and even wrangled Anan and a visibly proud Jayyed into the group. Together, the combined forces of the Southern and Northern Isikolo invaded Citadel City, heading for the largest drinking house they could find.
Good to his word, Hadith bought Tau’s rounds and Yaw told the story of “Tau’s Path.”
“We’re in the path, thinking to hold it against an Indlovu, maybe two, and bearing down on us are four of the bastards and the Enervator!” Yaw paused, giving his audience time to be impressed by the odds. “I’m a fighter, no doubt about it, but I was near to soiling my breeches. No shame in it, not when facing those odds.”
Yaw pointed a finger in Tau’s face, a handspan from touching his nose. “Then, Tau here, he turns to us and says, ‘Charge them.’”
Tau didn’t remember it like that but stayed quiet.
“He gets onto the first Indlovu and does his thing.” Yaw waved both hands around in the air like they were swords. “And, like that, he beats the Noble to pulp. I’m over there with Chinedu and Oyibo and we’re giving the second Indlovu a good go. He’s a giant of a thing, bigger than Uduak by two or three heads.”
Tau didn’t think the man had been that large. Yaw had the audience, though, and even Jayyed, who had stayed to drink with them, was leaning in.
“So, we’re busy fighting this tree of a man, which leaves Tau with two Indlovu and the Enervator. She’s standing there, nose in the air, knowing her Noble protectors are going to break Tau’s head in two. Only thing is, someone forgot to tell that to Tau.”
Yaw raised an eyebrow and looked round the room, catching the eye of every man, making the story feel told for their benefit alone. Other than Yaw’s voice and Chinedu’s occasional cough, the place was silent.
“The Indlovu go for Tau and, I swear to the Goddess and my mother, Tau tells them, I swear it, he tells them, ‘I will give you pain!’”
For a breath, the room was silent, until, as one, the men went wild, roaring their approval and stamping their feet. Yaw let the cheers go, nodding like nothing less was expected or deserved. Then, patting the air for silence, he continued. “‘I will give you pain,’ Tau told the No
ble bastards, and in sight of the Goddess and within Her will, as all things are… he did!”
The room exploded again and jugs were slammed on tabletops, backs were slapped, and masmas was spilled.
“He dropped two Indlovu while me, Chinedu, and Oyibo are doing all we can to avoid getting run through by one.”
Tau felt their eyes on him and tried to look stoic or something. He wasn’t sure what was expected. He wanted to explain that he didn’t fight the two Indlovu at the same time and that he only said what he had to make them angry enough to come at him one on one, but someone distracted him by shoving an overflowing jug of masmas into his hand. He had a jug in each.
“Was it after she saw her Indlovu go down that she enervated you?” asked a man from the North.
Yaw’s mood changed with the question. He’d been a playful and buoyant storyteller but turned somber. “Tau lured a demon away from me,” he said.
The room was quiet again, even Chinedu.
“It was going to kill me and there was nothing I could do. I know it can’t actually… but it’s so real.… It…” He trailed off.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” interjected Aqondise Anan, his words slurring. “The Enervator held you under for too long. I made a formal complaint to the citadel and her preceptor. It was improper of them to place someone who wasn’t ready into a skirmish.”
Jayyed spoke. “She made a mistake.”
“Eh, but what if she had turned one of our men demon-haunted? Last skirmish, Itembe damn near broke. Some nights he… All I’m saying is that I’m proud of you lot. It’s been a while since we’ve had a victory like that, and”—Anan glanced at Jayyed—“it makes this old soldier’s dream of seeing Ihashe in the Queen’s Melee again seem a little less idle.”
Jayyed inclined his head, acknowledging Anan’s words and the respect he was paying to the umqondisi’s own history and legend. “A long while since we’ve had a victory when an Enervator was present,” Jayyed said before raising his jug. “To the Ihashe, to the Omehi, to the Goddess, and our dreams.”