by Evan Winter
Dejen ignored her, speaking his first words to Tau. “I remember the Common from the testing. He died like all Lessers live, on his knees.” Dejen charged and Tau ran to meet him.
Dejen swung at Tau’s body, offering his slippery prey no opportunity to duck or leap back. Tau had no intention of doing either. He leapt on Dejen, his sword points soaring in for the sides of the Ingonyama’s neck. The leap brought Tau too close for Dejen’s blade to do damage, but the Ingonyama’s hilt and guard blasted him in the side, and Tau heard his ribs crack. He did not feel the pain. The only feeling in him was rage, as the points of his swords punched into the Ingonyama’s neck, just below the jaw.
“Die!” Tau screamed in the demon’s face as his weak-side sword snapped in two, unable to penetrate the Ingonyoma’s flesh. “Die!” he said again as his strong-side blade punctured Dejen’s skin, skittered across the harder muscle beneath, found purchase in the enraged man’s shoulder blade, and was jerked from Tau’s hand as they both went down.
Dejen snatched up Tau’s gambeson in his shield hand and Tau rammed his shattered weak-side sword, his father’s sword, into Dejen’s face.
“Die!” Tau yelled as the jagged bronze blade lodged itself a fingernail’s depth into Dejen’s lip, cheek, and eye, bursting the delicate orb in a gush of blood and ichor.
Dejen screamed and tossed Tau fifteen strides away with one arm, sending him flipping through the air like a straw doll to crash into the artist’s mock-up of the peninsula. He landed on the raised ridges of the Central Mountains, on the same side as his cracked ribs, and this time he felt the pain. It burned up and through him like wildfire, searing away all thought for several breaths.
“Get up, Dejen!” Tau heard the KaEid shout.
Tau forced himself into a sitting position and collapsed from the pain. Teeth gritted, he rolled to his good side. The KaEid seemed to be pouring as much energy as she could into Dejen, who had taken hold of Tau’s broken sword and was pulling it out of his face.
The Ingonyama roared as the bronze was wrenched free, tearing out the last bits of eye and half his bottom lip. Dejen stumbled his way to his feet, touching a hand to his ruined face. He was panting and soaked in blood.
“Tau!” came Jabari’s desperate voice from inside the room.
Tau shot a look that way. Dejen, with the eye left to him, did as well. Tau staggered to his feet. Jabari was losing his fight. He had a full-blood and Odili to contend with. Royal Nobles like Odili weren’t known for their bladework, but they were still well trained, and that made it two on one. Tau was needed, but Dejen charged, sword leading the way, and Tau had no weapons.
He danced backward, throwing potted plants, small statues, and even a fire-blackened brazier at the Ingonyama. Then, risking death, Tau dove to Dejen’s blind side, launching himself past the man and toward his fallen swords. He didn’t have time to get them both. He snatched his grandfather’s sword, came up blocking an unavoidable swing from Dejen, and almost lost his blade to the power behind the strike.
He shambled out of reach, placed a foot on his father’s shattered blade, and dragged it back with him. When he’d gained enough space to grab it without dying, he snatched it, grunting at the peals of pain from his smashed ribs.
“Tau! Tau! Tau!” yelled Jabari.
And Tau went at Dejen, stabbing, swinging, and firing his swords at the enormous man as fast as he could, aiming as often as he could for the Greater Noble’s remaining eye. The attacks alarmed Dejen, and for the first time the enraged man fought defensively, terrified of losing his sight.
Tau buried him under an unrelenting barrage of blows that could not cut Dejen deeply, but that was not their aim.
“The Goddess curse you, Dejen! Kill him!” the KaEid howled as Tau continued his assault, delivering attacks that forced the KaEid to pour more and more energy into maintaining Dejen’s enraging.
“Release me!” the KaEid demanded, the alarm in her voice at a fever pitch. “Release me!”
Her shroud, Tau knew, was gone. The demons were coming. Tau increased the pressure, his ribs protesting every movement while his will drove him on.
“You will pay, Dejen!” Tau taunted. “You will die, Dejen! You will burn blind in Isihogo with Ukufa for eternity, Dejen!”
“Release me!” The KaEid stumbled toward them. “Let me go, you fool!”
Dejen would not do it. Tau could see the fear in the man’s eye. Dejen knew that when the enraging left him, so would his life, because Tau would take it.
So Dejen did what he could to turn the tide of battle. He used his strength, his speed, his cunning, his training, to push an injured Tau back. He gave Tau a wicked but glancing cut to the thigh and came close to taking Tau’s wrist, but Tau turned his father’s sword in time to catch the brutal swing on the blade’s hilt. The move saved him from amputation but broke three of his fingers.
Dejen pressed on, Dejen was desperate, and Dejen ran out of time.
The KaEid screamed with enough anguish to cause both men to jump away from each other. She fell to her knees and clawed at her neck, and blood erupted from her ears, mouth, nose, and eyes. She convulsed and seized, the skin on her face blistering, bubbling, rupturing. Those screams became gurgles and the KaEid choked on her body’s fluids, going down to her hands, tossing this way and that, spattering them both with putrescence. With fingers clawed, she tore at her face, peeling stripes of flesh away in rolls. She opened her mouth wide, as if to give birth through it, and vomited a torrent of filth, her arms giving way as she did. She fell to the floor, no longer looking human, and she died.
Tau swung back to Dejen. The Ingonyama was no longer enraged. His black leathers hung loose and he was hunched from the pain of his many wounds.
“You killed my father,” Tau told him.
“You do this because a Lesser is dead?” Dejen spat, the words muddied by his mangled mouth. “He was worth nothing. You. Are. Nothing!”
Dejen charged, his sword leading. Tau slipped the killing thrust and stabbed his father’s broken blade through the Greater Noble’s chest and into his Noble heart.
“Perhaps,” Tau whispered, feeling the man’s lifeblood pulse from the wound, through his fingers, and down his hand, “but you are dead.”
Dejen gasped, trying to breathe. His eye fixed on Tau’s face. Tau put a hand over the Ingonyama’s shoulder and pulled him close, driving the blade deeper. Dejen’s lips twitched, but he said nothing, and never would.
“Tau!” It was Jabari.
Tau ripped his father’s broken sword from Dejen’s body and let the Noble drop to the floor. He stepped beyond the dead man and staggered over to the room where Jabari fought for his life, and where the queen hid to preserve hers. Tau went to murder Abasi Odili.
ESCAPE
Tau burst into the room. He saw Jabari and the Indlovu first. They were facing off and the Indlovu moved like he was drunk. Jabari was bleeding from several cuts and having trouble holding his sword. The queen was there too. Tsiora, in a high-backed gown of purest white, had her back to the wall and was standing next to a lavish bed stacked high with thick pillows and silken blankets. She was not alone. There was a middle-aged woman with her. The woman had a stern but attractive face and, at that moment, she had her hands out to the Indlovu. She dropped them when she saw Tau.
She was Gifted and had enervated the full-blood. She was the reason Jabari was still alive. Tau went for the full-blood, when he heard a noise behind him. He spun, sword leading, and smashed the earthenware jug that Abasi Odili had thrown.
Abasi stood in the opposite corner of the room, as far as he could get from the Gifted and fighting men. Without a breath, the guardian councillor and architect of the Royal Nobles’ coup ran from the room. Tau took off after Odili and heard Jabari cry out in pain.
Tau was at the door. He looked back. The queen had her eyes on him, locked on him, and the Gifted woman looked grim, lips pursed tight. She wouldn’t be able to access energy from Isihogo for a quarter span
at least. She was defenseless. Worst was Jabari. He’d taken a deep cut from forehead to chin that had just missed his eye. The floor was slick with blood, and as Tau watched, the Indlovu stabbed him in the biceps of his shield arm.
“Tau!” Jabari screamed, tumbling back and onto the ground.
Tau looked out the door. Abasi was getting away, but Tau could catch him. He took a step to do it, throwing a last look in the room and seeing the queen, who couldn’t be more than a cycle or two apart from him in age.
It was madness to think she could lead them all. It was madness to place their survival in this girl’s ability to renew peace with the Xiddeen. The effort would fail, and Tau could still catch Abasi. He could still…
Tau yelled his frustration and ran toward the fight. The Indlovu, hearing him come, swung to meet the attack, and they crossed blades. Tau feinted high with his broken sword and thrust low with his strong side, his ribs blazing pain the entire time. The Indlovu had no shield. He blocked the high attack and was run through with the other blade.
The man had spirit, though. With his free hand he pulled a dagger from his belt and went for Tau’s chest. Using the sword embedded in the Noble’s belly, Tau dragged the Indlovu in a semicircle, throwing off his attack and turning the attempt at a mortal stab into a glancing gash.
As they spun, the Indlovu tried to maintain his balance, yelling in agony. His lips were pulled back and his mouth was open, blood-tinged saliva sloshing around his teeth. Tau fired his left hand forward, planting his broken sword in the man’s clavicle. The Indlovu sighed, the air going out of him, and then it was over.
Jabari, bleeding everywhere, slid his back up the wall behind him until he was sitting. He wiped at the cut on his face, smearing the blood and making it look like he was wearing a gruesome mask.
“You fight for the queendom?” Queen Tsiora asked, trembling.
Tau didn’t answer. He had to catch Odili. He ran for the door and into three men. He jumped back, swords ready.
“Tau, easy,” Kellan said, “It’s me.”
“Where’s Odili?”
“Odili? We didn’t see him.”
Kellan was with Hadith and Uduak.
“My queen.” Kellan dropped to a knee, facing the ground in front of his foot. Following his lead, Hadith and Uduak did the same. “We came as soon as we could,” Kellan told her.
The stern Gifted woman spoke first. “Have we won the keep? Is the queen safe?”
“How is Abshir?” Queen Tsiora asked.
Kellan raised his head. “My queen…” He paused, mouth opening and shutting a time or two. “Champion Okar has been killed, fighting in your defense,” he said. “I am his nephew, Kellan Okar, third-cycle initiate of the Indlovu Citadel.”
“Abshir is dead?” Tsiora asked, still shaking but hands clasped tight, as if to hold herself together. “He was your uncle? I’m sorry.”
The Gifted walked over to Kellan, pulling his attention to her. “Has the attack been repelled?”
“Vizier Nyah,” Kellan said, addressing the Gifted woman, “the Queen’s Guard holds the keep, but it is under siege by Odili’s Indlovu.”
“My queen,” the vizier said, “we must rejoin the guard. We must see to the defense of the keep and ensure the safety of the warlord’s son. Odili has shown his hand and will be punished, but if we lose the warlord’s son, if Kana dies—”
“How did you not see him?” Tau asked a kneeling Kellan.
“Lesser,” the vizier said, “when in the presence of Her Majesty—”
“He can’t have gone far,” Tau insisted. “I have to find—”
“Lesser!” the vizier shouted over Tau.
“Tau, kneel,” hissed Kellan.
Tau did not. He rounded on the vizier, taking a long step in her direction. “Call me Lesser one more time.”
The vizier seemed unable to believe her eyes. She gulped, opened her mouth, then shut it.
Tau spoke to Kellan. “I’m going to find Odili.”
“Nyah is right, Ihashe,” the queen told Tau. “We must go to the battlements. The men have to know that we are alive and that there is still value to this fight. We do not believe we can make it alone. Will you accompany us? Will you protect your queen?”
“We will, my queen,” said Kellan.
Tau could not allow Odili to escape.
“May we know your name?” Queen Tsiora said.
He didn’t want to admit it, but every time she spoke to him it was a shock.
“Name? My… Tau. Tau Solarin.”
“Will you come too, Tau Solarin?”
Tau’s pulse was racing. He’d come so close. So close and his chance was lost. He nodded to his queen.
“We thank you,” she said. “Rise, Kellan Okar. Rise, men in his company. We ask that you take us to the battlements of our keep. We would see this coup crushed.”
GATES
They marched past the bodies of the fallen Indlovu, Dejen, and the KaEid. The queen closed her eyes, letting Nyah guide her beyond the carnage. The vizier did not seem able to believe the scene before her.
“The KaEid is dead from a demon-death,” Nyah said, describing what she saw to the queen. “Ingonyama Olujimi must have been enraged, but he… he appears to have been killed by a sword.” Nyah turned to Tau. “He was enraged and you were alone. How did this happen?”
“The KaEid’s shroud collapsed. She was first to die. Dejen was not enraged when the blade took him through the chest,” Tau told her.
“Not enraged when the blade took him through the… you fought an Enraged Ingonyama until his Gifted’s shroud collapsed? Is that what is being suggested here?”
She emphasized the word “shroud,” bringing attention to the fact that Tau had used it first. Tau ignored that, saying nothing more, but could feel Nyah’s eyes on him, her stare making his back itch.
As they rushed toward the battlements, Kellan told the queen and her vizier everything they knew. He told them about Jamilah and what they believed had taken place at the Xiddeen Conclave. The news seemed to age the vizier. Queen Tsiora was more stoic but also couldn’t hide her alarm.
“Abasi and Taia have doomed us,” the vizier said. “They’ve killed us all.”
“We will tell the Xiddeen we were betrayed,” Queen Tsiora said as they arrived in the keep’s central courtyard.
Tau wasn’t sure they had to worry about that. Throughout the courtyard was scattered fighting. The Queen’s Guard were winning, and that should have been encouraging. It wasn’t. The keep’s heavy bronze gates shook and buckled every few breaths.
“Battering ram,” Kellan said.
Hadith pointed to the battlements. “Up there.”
There was fighting. A few Indlovu had scaled the walls, and the Queen’s Guard, battling alongside the warlord’s son, did their best to send them back down the way they’d come.
“Kana,” said the queen.
“By the Goddess!” exclaimed the vizier. “If the savage gets himself killed…”
“They need help,” Kellan said.
“Stay with the queen,” Hadith suggested to Kellan, looking to Tau and Uduak. Uduak grunted his assent and the three men ran up the stone stairs to the top of the battlements, Tau’s injured side torturing him with every step.
At the top, Tau looked out and down. Odili’s men were everywhere. The keep was surrounded and it would not take long for the Indlovu to breach it. A swarm of them were using roped hooks to climb its walls, and there were two units of Indlovu driving a bronze-tipped battering ram into its gates. Behind the fighters manning the ram, a few hundred Indlovu waited, their weapons flickering with reflected torchlight. The hot night stunk of burning pitch, leather, sweat, and blood.
Tau dashed to the walls and cut at one of the roped hooks, doing his best to dislodge it. The rope was thick as an arm and taut with the weight of climbers. It was difficult to cut and Tau had to abandon the attempt to kill a man.
“Leave it!” yelled Hadith. “Get to th
e Xiddian.”
Kana was fighting heavy odds. In pain, Tau staggered to his defense, splitting an Indlovu’s face as he went.
Uduak got there first. He faced down a full-blood and they battered at each other’s shields. Hadith joined the fight, coming in low, driving his sword through the crotch of Uduak’s opponent. The Indlovu fell away, screaming.
Next to Hadith, a Queen’s Guard died to a straight thrust, and Kana, the man they were trying to protect, stepped into the gap.
“Get back!” Hadith ordered.
Kana shook his head, his long braids flying around his shoulders like angry serpents. Then one of Odili’s Indlovu swung for him. Tau was not close enough and Kana had his shoulder turned to the man.
“Watch!” Tau screamed, and Kana ducked, losing a braid instead of his head to the Indlovu’s blade. Kana thrust his short spear at the man. The Indlovu blocked the attack with his shield and Tau buried his blade in the Noble’s throat.
The four men, Tau, Uduak, Hadith, and Kana, along with a few of the Queen’s Guard, held their section of the battlement, killing the remaining Indlovu who had made the climb. Uduak went so far as to disarm one man, then throw him from the walls, onto another climber, dispatching them both. Area clear, they chopped at the rope hooks, dislodging them.
“Battlement secure!” Hadith yelled to Kellan.
Three breaths later they were joined. The queen stood on the inner side of the battlement, the one closest to the keep. Down below, her guard had won their fight as well.
Queen Tsiora looked out at the massacre on the courtyard’s stones. She was statue still and her head was held high. It was as if she was waiting to be painted. Tau did not understand what she was doing. Then one of the Queen’s Guard saw her and cheered. The rest of fighters, the ones in the courtyard and on the battlements, looked. They all saw their queen, their reason for this fight, and the loyalists gave a shout. Tsiora raised her royal hand and waved it at her men, like she was blessing them, and the ragged cheer grew louder.
Yaw came jogging up the steps with Themba. “Brothers!”