“You may use the cannons,” says Otgar, reading Alshara’s gestures. “When I allowed Yuichi to marry me, they made me agree I’d never use them again—but Barsatoq has allowed us, since we’re facing the enemy. Fool that he is, he never made me give up the cannons themselves.”
“And we’ve been dragging them through the Empire since,” says Ganzorig. “Good we’re getting some use out of them.”
Even Shefali is giddy. She’s seen small cannons during her travels; they are popular in Sur-Shar, where good steel is hard to come by and there isn’t enough room to draw a sword. As a child she’d tried to crawl inside the cannons and Otgar had yanked her out every time. To see them in action—well. At least she is fulfilling most of her childhood dreams before she dies.
“But don’t focus too much on them!” Otgar continues.
“You’ve already lost her,” says Khadiyya, and it is true enough—Dalaansuv’s eyes have glazed over with wonder.
“We need trebuchets, as well; we need barbed pits and trip lines. Catapults for flinging tar. Look over the list, Dalaansuv! Actually read it!”
“I will, I will,” says Dalaansuv. She manages to calm down enough to turn her attention back to the map, marking off where each particular invention will go. The scent of her joy tingles in Shefali’s nose.
“The rest of you,” says Otgar. Alshara is signing so quickly that Shefali wonders how her cousin is keeping up. She decides the translation must not be exact. “We’re keeping our plan simple, in case we’ve got to change it while we’re out there. This river here, they call it the Kirin’s Horn; there’s a valley right by it a little off the road. We engage them up by the mountain and beat a retreat down the Azure Promise, turning here—” She points to a spot at the source of the Horn. “—where Ganzorig, Zurgaanqar, your people are in charge of digging out that trench. We head straight for the bend and turn at the last moment; they all fall into the valley. Rest of us stand up here on the ridge and fire down.”
“That won’t kill them,” says Zurgaanqar. She says nothing about being paired with a man other than her husband. Uncle Bolodai, to whom she is married, is out hunting at the moment. Aunt Bayaansokh, Ganzorig’s wife, isn’t here either; she took those who didn’t want to fight and brought them back to the steppes. “You remember what happened in the North when Barsalai was a girl. Arrows did nothing.”
Alshara meets her daughter’s eyes then, and now she is not smiling.
Shefali knows what is coming. She knows what they will ask of her. And what place does she have to refuse? It’s safest this way, safest for everyone. Besides—the Mother was specific with regard to the day she’d die, and it isn’t yet the first of Qurukai.
“I’ll kill them,” Barsalai says.
“Needlenose, you’ve said a lot of dumb things in your time, but that—Sky’s end, that’s stupid,” says Otgar. She’s speaking for herself now—Alshara is glaring at her.
Shefali frowns. “You know I can,” she says. “More than anyone.” That Otgar would doubt her even after their journey into the Womb stings.
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” says Otgar. “What if we send you and some others—?”
“The other people will die,” Shefali says. “Send me.”
“What’s gotten into you?” says Otgar. She’s rounding on Shefali now, jabbing a finger in her chest. “If you throw yourself at them, they’re going to throw you back at us in pieces.”
“They won’t,” says Shefali. She stands, stares her cousin down. Otgar is speaking out of concern. Shefali knows that.
But she knows, too, that Otgar heard the words of the Mother. The first of Qurukai, and not a day before it.
The rest of the ger watches them in silence. Otgar stares right back at her, steadfast as ever. Neither of them has asked the other about what happened in the city. Otgar called her a coward then. Would she repeat that insult now?
“Burqila,” says Otgar. “Tell your daughter she’s being a fool.”
But the answer that comes makes Otgar ruddier when she sees it. Ruddy enough that she cannot even voice it.
Instead, Khadiyyar does. “She says it’s safest that way, Dorbentei. She’s not happy about it either—but that’s the truth of it.”
Otgar, fuming, storms out of the ger. Shefali watches her go with a heavy heart. For a moment she considers going after her. Maybe if they discussed this, the two of them, she could talk some sense into her. But then again, from the look on Otgar’s face, she could smoke all the Blessing in the world and still be in a fury.
And so Shefali sits back down in her mother’s ger. Her aunts and her uncles are staring at her now, but that’s all right.
“I’ll go,” she says. “The rest of you stay safe.”
* * *
SHEFALI’S HEARD CANNONS before, but she’s never heard them sing. That changes now. Up ahead, as the first ranks of the enemy come spilling down the mountain, Aunt Dalaansuv’s cannons go off in time with an old Qorin hunting song. The majority of the Qorin, waiting at the first bend of the Azure Promise Road, cannot help but hum along.
Strange, it is, to mount and fall into formation with her aunts and uncles—but natural, too. When she fought in Ikhtar, she had no idea who was watching her back. Here there can be little doubt. Her aunts and uncles will be happy to save her if something comes at her from behind, and they’ll be happy to hold it over her head for the rest of her short life. Yes, seeing Auntie Khadiyyar holding up a massive Surian crossbow is odd, but it is no more odd than seeing your favorite merchant sitting in a teahouse. On some level, Shefali has always known her family is one of warriors. They are hunters, after all, and in the end, what they are doing this night is not so different.
Well.
Maybe a bit.
You don’t wear war masks during a hunt.
When she looks around her now, a menagerie is staring back at her. Wolves, mostly, but there are bears and leopards, too; there are plumed eagles and sleek kestrels. Fat Mongke’s gone and killed an ibex just to add its horns to his mask. Leave it to the Qorin to decorate everything they can get their hands on.
But Shefali likes it. Each mask is unique that way. Even the wolves are decorated differently: some are painted and some carved; some are howling and some are laughing. Hokkaran war masks are all the same. If you are to face death, then why not tell death about yourself?
She tugs on her laughing fox. It’s a full moon night—her favorite kind—and the air’s drier up here by the mountains. Good weather for hunting, good weather for war. The bow in her hand—the bow she fashioned so long ago—hums along to the song Dalaansuv is playing them.
Otgar, of course, has started outright singing along. The others join in until the valley near them buzzes with the sound of their combined voices. Even Alshara—wearing a mask of her own angry face—signs along with the words.
Her heart’s beating in time with the cannonfire now. Despite the rags she’s stuffed into the fox’s mouth, she can smell the clan’s excitement. She lifts the mask enough to drink in the scent, to let it feed the hungry cold within her. In all the assembled Qorin, there is not a bit of fear. Anger, yes, and hatred for the enemy they will soon face—but not fear.
Good. She isn’t afraid either.
They’re coming down the mountain now, the blackbloods. Shefali can see them already. Like beetles, they are, the moonlight bejeweling their black carapaces. Great horns rise out from the front of them, not unlike Mongke’s ibex. Hundreds of them, if Shefali does not miss her guess (and she is not really guessing). Clouds of dust and gravel follow in their wake as they stampede down the mountain, as they near the first turn. Farther up the path, in the pits the cannonballs made while landing, beetles lie crushed and squirming in pools of inky black.
Why didn’t they use cannons before?
The ground is starting to rumble now, as the blackbloods approach.
Alshara holds up a hand and starts to sign.
“Three volleys,
” says Otgar. “Three volleys and the parting shots. Remember these were people once—aim for the head when you can.”
A quiet comes over them.
“Remember you are Qorin!” says Otgar, reading Alshara’s signs. “If the Traitor himself comes to face you, chop off his head and use his skull to drink your kumaq!”
The first of the beetles rounds the corner.
“Arrows!” shouts Temurin, and five thousand Qorin reach for their favorite broadheads.
“Draw!” shouts Temurin, and five thousand bows creak in ten thousand hands.
“Fire!” shouts Temurin, and five thousand arrows fly as needles through the velvet night.
There is no time to watch them land. Temurin calls for a second volley before the arrows reach their targets, and third just after that. Aunt Khadiyyar, next to Shefali, gets off only one shot with the Surian crossbow—but it’s one she’s proud of, for it punches through the thick carapace of a blackblood and pins it to the ground.
“Hah!” she says. “This thing was worth it!”
Shefali doesn’t have the heart to tell her she pierced through their armor, too, with only her own bow and her arms to draw it. Perhaps because the only reason she can draw at all is Ren’s medicine. The pain Shefali feels now is as a cinder to a forge. In truth it’s a little intoxicating to be able to move with such ease.
With her knees, for instance, she can urge her horse to turn as the other horses do. Whereas firing a single shot once pained her to no small end she now finds herself reaching for another arrow. Her muscles ache as she draws back her bow for the fourth time, but it is only soreness. In the face of what she used to suffer, soreness is as pleasant as a spring day.
She fires her parting shot, watches it land straight in the screaming mouth of a thing that was once human, watches it writhe and bleed. Not all the arrows have landed, but they’ve done better than she expected—there are twoscore dead at least as they make for the second turn. As the last of the Qorin clear the turn, Otgar screams for the trebuchets.
The trebuchets don’t sing as the cannons do. They creak instead, and the stones they rain down on the enemy whistle before crashing into the rough ground. Hissing and skittering soon follow as the beetles pinned beneath the rocks struggle to free themselves. Given they had time for a single trebuchet volley, only the heaviest rocks they could find were chosen.
“Parting volley!” shouts Temurin. As one, the Qorin turn and draw and fire, and Shefali wonders if this is how it felt to ride in her mother’s army so many years ago. Every beetle that falls is a triumph they all share; every arrow that finds purchase belongs to them all. Beneath the laughing fox mask, she is smiling.
The third turn is upon them, the most treacherous before they reach the actual trick turn. The ground here is more gravel than earth, and if your horse isn’t as sure-footed as she should be—
Shefali grips the horn as her gray whips past the turn. Otgar and her dun, too, have little trouble. Alshara has already outpaced them on her liver mare.
But Auntie Khadiyya can’t get a grip on her horn in time with the crossbow in hand. When her horse skids, she loses her balance for an instant.
An instant is all it takes. She is falling now, tumbling out of her saddle as the beetles draw closer.
The practical thing to do is to leave her. That’s what Alshara would do, what Alshara does as she continues right on down the twisting road. That it is her own sister lying there near death does not seem to bother her. Why should it? Khadiyya is the only one who did not make the turn. To stop and go back for her would slow the rest of the riders, would risk more lives.
But the heroic thing to do—the thing Shizuka would do—is to go back anyway. That she is choosing to pattern her behavior after the most foolhardy woman she knows is not lost on Shefali, but she won’t be dying this day. What is the worst that can happen?
So Shefali pulls hard on her reins and twists her body. Her gray knows what she wants even though she isn’t particularly happy about it; they turn from the rear of the riders and bolt straight for the fallen Khadiyya.
Barsalai hears the shouts of her clan, hears Temurin and Otgar telling her she’s being an idiot, and ignores them. To do so is a forbidden thrill. At least it is not her mother calling her an idiot—she doesn’t know if she could do this if her mother told her to stay.
But she’s doing it now, and she understands all of a sudden why Shizuka insists on doing things like this. Facing down hundreds of beetles hungry for her flesh, making hairpin turns, swinging from her saddle and scooping up Khadiyya—she understands as her heart hammers in her ears.
This is why Shizuka always said they would be gods one day.
The beetles are less than a horselength away now, with Alsha galloping as fast as she can. Up ahead of them, the Qorin are nearing the fourth and final turn, the turn that is not a turn. Khadiyya settles onto the horse behind her niece. When the beetles crawl over her horse, when she hears it whinny in pain, she turns away from the sight. A pang of sympathy shoots through Shefali, but sympathy won’t get them out of this.
The good news is that some of the vanguard beetles stopped to eat the horse, putting a bit of distance between them. The bad news is that there are still several hundred of them bearing down upon Shefali.
It isn’t the first time she’s been pursued by a mob like this. At least there’s sky above her now. She wasn’t so lucky with the Rassat, or with the Surians, or in the Womb. The moon hanging high as it is fills her with a hope that stands firm in the face of impossible odds.
Back then, after all, she hadn’t had this medicine. Back then she’d had to work around her pain.
Now she doesn’t.
She reaches for more arrows. Two at a time she fires them from her stout bow; two at a time the beetles are pierced to the ground. She doesn’t need to kill all of them, only enough to create a little distance.
Twenty. Twenty is the right number.
By the fifth shot her shoulders ache; by the sixth they are screaming; by the seventh she is sure she won’t be able to lift anything tomorrow. But that is all right. She doesn’t need to worry about tomorrow, only today, only now—
Two of the beetles leap toward her just as they rejoin the clan. She didn’t know they could do that, but there it is, a beetle the size of a pony attacking, mandibles chittering. Down the middle of it, there is another mouth, this one lined with fangs.
It is good that she has two shots prepared already. Barsalai looses her arrows right at the beetles. Her arrows sink into the softer flesh of the thing’s underbelly and out through the other side, dripping black down onto them like shy rain. In midair they let out their death rattles.
But that doesn’t stop them falling.
She shoves her bow into Khadiyya’s hands and stands in the saddle. The first of the beetles hurtles toward her; she catches it barehanded. A torrent of spit falls on her but she does not let go; her back aches at the weight of it, but she does not let go. As if it were feather light, she flings it at its companion. Both crumble into the ground; both are soon eaten by the oncoming crowd.
When she sinks back into the saddle, she is grinning still, beneath the mask. Even Khadiyya is awestruck.
At least until her horse speaks.
Never hold something that heavy on me again, says Alsha.
“Sorry,” says Shefali.
Consider things before you do them, Barsalai.
Well. What else was she supposed to do? Tear it in half? Oh, she could have, but that would’ve gotten blood all over Khadiyya, and Shefali didn’t know whether her aunt’s fall had broken skin. This was the safer thing.
She’d thought about it. She had!
“You done playing Tumenbayar?” Otgar calls out to her.
“Haven’t started yet,” Shefali says. Which is true enough, for this isn’t even the difficult part of the evening.
“Well, you’d better get a move on,” Otgar calls back. “We’re coming up on the turn!”
This is going to be close. Closer, even, than the last turn had been. That they’ve not lost anyone yet is a testament to their own talent and to the Sky’s kindness, and perhaps a little to Shefali’s foolishness.
There will be people who don’t make this turn, people related to her in all likelihood, and she won’t be able to save them. She won’t have time.
For at the end of that slope is the pit, and in the pit she will fight them.
All of them.
How many are left now? She lifts her mask long enough to sniff the air. Still a hundred at least. Minami Shizuru, as fine a warrior as Shefali had ever known, died fighting a tenth that number. Granted, she did not have Shefali’s particular talents—but still. No one Shefali has ever heard of had fought so many at once.
Well. It is always Qorin doing things first, isn’t it? First to trade with Sur-Shar, first to ride horses, first to discover how to shape their bodies, first to craft bows. This will be no different.
“You’re certain of this, Barsalai?” says Temurin.
I’m always certain, Shizuka would say.
“Yes,” says Shefali.
“If you’re torn apart—”
“I won’t be,” she answers. The turn is coming. She slips out of the saddle, so that only the stirrups are keeping her mounted. “Aunt Khadiyyar, see to my horse?”
Her aunt nods. She pinches Shefali’s cheek. “You saw to my life,” she says. “I’ll see to yours.”
Shefali looks out onto the slope. Already the others are getting out their whips to turn. The sea of beetles grows closer and closer.
Three in the lead jump for her.
And so she jumps, too.
For a fight like this, it’s time to leave her old shape behind. The wolf, then; she shall wear the wolf’s form. So often did she wear it in the first year of her exile that it is as easy to slip into as her deel.
The Warrior Moon Page 14