The Rage of Dragons (Book of the Burning)

by Evan Winter

  By all rights, given the numbers of Xiddeen, the Omehi, even with their Dragons, should have been wiped out long ago, but their peninsula was a natural fortress, and the Omehi had held it for near on two hundred cycles. Upon reaching the fighting grounds of The Crags, Tau imagined they could hold for a hundred more.

  The Crags were, like Daba, a massive mountain plateau. Unlike the hamlet, the earth throughout The Fist and Crags could not be farmed. It was rocky and dead and the plateau was no different. The Omehi, ever resourceful, had found a purpose for it anyway.

  The Crags were sectioned off into several battlefields meant to simulate the conditions the Omehi military faced in the endless war. To the West, where The Crags gave way to more mountainous territory, the Isikolo and Citadels practiced tactics, defenses and attacks suited to the highlands. On the plateau itself, there was a thousand strides of ground that had been churned over and over until the topsoil felt and shifted like desert sands. This battleground matched many of the conditions in The Wrist. There was also a field of sown grass, out of place at this elevation, that resembled the majority of The Rend's flatlands.

  Then, there was the last battleground. Tau found it to be the most fascinating. It was a mock city. It looked like the Goddess had scooped up a decent chunk of Kigambe and dropped it on the plateau. Tau stared in wonder at the city replica. He understood why it was the battleground used for the Queen's Melee, the end of cycle competition between the highest ranked Scales. The battleground's strategic and tactical possibilities were infinite, and it had been tucked between two natural rises in the Crags. The rises had been cut into spectator seats. The city replica, surrounded by seating, was a war arena.

  "Well, that's something," said Hadith.

  "It's bigger than my village," added Yaw.

  "Meant to be like if the hedeni got into one of our cities?" asked Themba. "Ask me, we lost already, if they get ever that far."

  Tau had heard more than enough from Themba. "So, they get to our cities, you'd like to lie down and take what they give us?"

  Themba was about to answer, but Hadith cut in. "He's not wrong. Once the Xiddeen are in our cities, we can't call the Guardians down on them in any good way. The Dragons would burn everything and kill as many of us as they would them. If the Xiddeen get into Palm, Kigambe, or Jirza, it would mean the end of us."

  Themba smirked, vindicated. "Like I said, they get that far and we're already dead."

  Anan strode over. "Too much talking. Stow your gear. We're for the desert battlefield to watch Scale Njere tackle a third of Scale Oban.

  "Fifty-four Ihashe initiates against eighteen from the Citadel?" Tau asked. He knew they let themselves be outnumbered, but a third of a Scale wasn't enough men to do much and Tau couldn't see how the Nobles would come out on top against such odds.

  "They'll have an Ennie," Anan said, as if that alone made up the gap in men.

  "Happy to be watching then," chimed in Themba.

  "Hurry over," Anan said. "We'll listen in on Umqondisi Njere's strategy. Maybe you'll learn something." Anan pointed to where the Scale Njere was already gathered. He went that way himself, not bothering to see if they were following.

  "Planning ain't gonna make much difference."

  "Shut up, Themba." Hadith seemed to have had enough of him too.

  Tau left them arguing and followed Anan. Lessers against Nobles. This he wanted to see.

  ENERVATED

  The plan, as best as Tau could judge, was a good one. Scale Njere would fight on the desert battlefield and that meant it would be a brawl. The desert had several manmade dunes, but there were few places to hide or maneuver. To take advantage of that, Umqondisi Njere opted for a brute force approach, with one catch. He split the Scale into four units.

  The units would attack as one, but each unit was also given a direction on the compass. When the Enervator took aim, the units would run in the direction of their compass point. Tau had learned that a Gifted could only make use of her gifts once every quarter-span or so and, given that limitation, the goal was to minimize her effect on the battle by minimizing the number of men she could hit.

  The Scale's Inkokeli was Itembe. He was Governor Caste from Kigambe, and a strong fighter.

  "Plan's good," said Uduak as the Scale took the field.

  "As good as it can be when you're fighting in a wide open desert," Hadith agreed.

  Themba picked his teeth. "Not gonna matter."

  "Shut it," Yaw told him.

  "You'll see," Themba said.

  Most of the men had taken a seat on the ground just beyond the battlefield. Tau was standing. He scanned the Crags, hoping, praying to find Kellan, and not knowing what he'd do, if he did.

  "Tau, you're making me nervous," Hadith said. "Sit."

  Tau ignored him.

  "Here they go!" said Themba, as an Aqondise blew a war horn, signaling the beginning of the contest.

  Scale Njere's fifty-four Lessers and their opponents, the eighteen Nobles from the Citadel along with their Enervator, ran onto the battlefield from opposite sides. The Indlovu broke into two teams, both making for dunes large enough to conceal their movements. The Enervator, dressed in the standard black robes, had been assigned two bodyguards.

  It was forbidden and punishable by death to attack a Gifted, but coming within a blade's length of one, during a skirmish, counted as a kill. The 'killed' Gifted had to leave the field, depriving her team of her power. The bodyguards were there to repel any who dared come close.

  "Interesting," said Hadith. "Itembe has all four units going for the side with the Gifted."

  Uduak grunted.

  "It's clever," Hadith said. "If he can get there fast enough, he can take her out of play." Hadith leaned forward and Tau felt himself do the same as Scale Njere streamed up the near side of the dune, which hid just nine Indlovu and the one Gifted.

  The twelve fastest runners in the Scale made it to the top and were met by three Indlovu. This won't take long, thought Tau. Bronze flashed and, in two breaths, Tau saw four Ihashe dropped to the churned soil, one of them a bloody mess.

  The three men from the Citadel, all still standing, were joined by two more. The Nobles engaged the eight closest Ihashe, as the rest of Scale Njere closed the distance. The Nobles smashed their way through the eight Lessers and closed ranks to take on the newcomers. Tau couldn't believe what he was seeing, but thought the Nobles' luck had run its course, Scale Njere were together on the dune and attacking.

  The other unit of Nobles, seeing their sword-brothers facing all of Scale Njere, rushed to join the fight. They came for Scale Njere's rear side, likely intending to split the Scale's attention in two. It was then that the Gifted, flanked by her two bodyguards, surfaced.

  She waited until Scale Njere was committed to their attack, and her hands came up. The Indlovu guarding her stepped back, not wanting to be grazed by the energy she was preparing to blast.

  Scale Njere saw her and they scattered. It wasn't organized and it wasn't to predetermined compass points. The men just ran, clumping as they fled. They didn't get far. The Gifted fired.

  To Tau, it looked like heat pulsed from her fingers in shimmering waves which dropped every man they hit. Itembe was one of them and his face locked up in terror. It lasted less than a breath before the Enervator lowered her arms, but the affected men didn't rise.

  Some, wild-eyed and frantic, managed to stand, but were still useless. They swung their heads back and forth, trapped in the afterimages of unseen horrors. Many of the rest, who had fallen, stayed down. Tau heard them whimpering or crying out.

  There was also Itembe. He was on his knees, staring off at nothing, rocking. Then, he tensed, looked up to the sky, and screamed. The sound, ripped from Itembe's throat, chilled Tau to his essence.

  There wasn't much to the skirmish after that. The Nobles tore through the Ihashe fighters who had escaped the enervating wave, while the men struck by the Gifted's powers, struggled to recover. By the time the afflicted I
hashe were on their feet, it was a simple thing for the Nobles to send them back to the dirt. Just two Indlovu had been 'killed' in the skirmish, whereas, every last man from Scale Njere had been eliminated.

  "Hmm," said Themba. "They did better than I thought. Got two Nobles."

  "Nceku," said Hadith, no force behind it. He looked crestfallen.

  Tau glanced at Uduak. The big man was shaken.

  "Not good," Uduak rumbled. "Not good."

  "Let's go," Anan said. "We'll help the injured off the field."

  Tau didn't know why he did it, but he went straight to Itembe. He helped the initiate to his feet and saw the large lump on the side of his head, where a Noble had struck him. Itembe didn't seem to notice the injury.

  As Tau walked him over to the Sah priests, Itembe spoke, his words tripping over each other. "Is it over?"

  "It is."

  "The demons, they're real."

  "I know," Tau said.

  "They got me. I couldn't stop them. They fell on me with claws and teeth, ripped my skin, tore the eyes from my head, and I could still see them! I watched them cut my stomach open, pulling the ropes of my guts from my body. I could see them, and the pain..." Itembe snatched at Tau's tunic, bunching the worn material in frantic fingers. "Help me!"

  "It's over."

  "Then why can I still see them?"

  Tau jerked free of Itembe's grasp. "What?"

  "Easy Itembe." Umqondisi Njere had come himself for his student. "Easy."

  Tau watched until Njere got Itembe into the Sah priests' healing tent and then noticed someone beside him.

  "Itembe got it bad," Hadith said.

  "Demons had enough time to tear into him."

  Hadith rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. "It breaks people."

  "They almost got me."

  "Neh?"

  "The ones at Daba," Tau told him. "They came for me. I've never been so scared. My father pulled me out of the Gifted's wave, right before."

  "Lucky. That was war. The Gifted would have held the hedeni, and you, in Isihogo for as long as possible."

  "He pulled me back..."

  Hadith clapped Tau on the shoulder. "Father's a good man."

  "He's dead," said Tau, walking back to the rest of the Scale.

  They watched another skirmish, this one without Enervators. The Indlovu adjusted for the lack of Gifted by fielding half a Scale against a full Scale from the Northern Isikolo. Tau had only met a few Northerns and, on the march over, had looked forward to seeing them fight.

  After watching the Indlovu crush his brothers, he no longer felt eager. Tau understood the point of the games. The Nobles were bigger, stronger, and faster than the Lessers. True, the skirmishes between them were meant to train the Omehi for war, but they were also meant to remind the Lessers of their place.

  The Scale from the North fought the Nobles, who numbered half their men, on the grasslands battleground. Without the aid of a Gifted, the Indlovu lost a third of their fighters before the final Lesser fell. The initiates, around Tau, acted like it was a triumph, cheering their Northern brethren's efforts. Tau didn't see anything worth cheering. A loss was a loss and managing to beat one-third of your enemy, when you doubled their number, was pitiful.

  Jayyed, Tau thought, had raised them up with well spoken words about effort, superior training, and winning, but the reality was in front of Tau, and it was undeniable. The Nobles had natural born advantages and Tau wasn't sure those advantages could be overcome.

  He'd hoped to see Kellan. He'd hoped to deliver swift justice to the Citadel initiate. And, Tau had spent night after night picturing his eventual duel with Dejen, how he'd kill the Ingonyama, and then demand that Abasi face him. The path had seemed so clear, until Tau saw Nobles fighting Lessers.

  Jayyed approached. "Tastes rotten, doesn't it?"

  Tau thought it did. "You didn't tell us the truth of it."

  "Didn't I?"

  "We can't beat them."

  "Not yet. They use men from all three cycles in each third or half-Scale they field. We need to get better first."

  "They'll snap our Scale like kindling."

  "I wanted all of you to see this before you fought in your first skirmish. Most Umqondisi disagree. They prefer their initiates to come in blind. Every Lesser knows Indlovu are incredible fighters but, the thinking goes, our new initiates have the best chance to perform well if they don't know how outclassed they are.

  "I won't have my men ignorant. When you fight for me, you'll do it with eyes open. You'll know the odds and understand the challenges. I'll point you to victory, but it's you who has to get there."

  Tau wasn't interested in Jayyed's easy words. "It's a farce. They use this to keep us in our place. They know we won't win, that we can't. They hold skirmishes, they have the Queen's Melee, and we're told Ihashe and Indlovu rise on talent. Noble, Lesser, they say it doesn't matter on the fields of war."

  Tau waved a hand across the grasslands, where men from the North were still being helped away. "It matters. It matters in war as much as it does everywhere else, and everything they do is to remind us of that."

  "So, your eyes are open. You see the world for what it is. Is it enough? The world as it is?"

  Tau was frustrated and had been bold with his Umqondisi. He tempered his answer and lowered his eyes, out of respect. "You know it isn't," he said, wanting to say much more.

  "And perhaps it never will be. But, while we breathe, the best of us never stop trying to make it better, even if just by a little." Jayyed turned away, shouting to the rest of the Scale. "The skirmishes are done. The rest of the day is yours. I will go to Citadel City to visit friends I have not seen in too long. As you've likely heard, there are drinking houses and markets where you can waste your stipend. There are the Citadels, the Guardian Keep, and yes. Yes, yes, yes. There are comfort lodges. Be smart, be safe, we march home at nightfall."

  The men cheered, excited to see the famed city, drink, couple with the woman of its renowned comfort lodges, and stand in front of the Guardian Keep, the locus of military power, where the Guardian Council decided where and when they would spend the lives of their soldiers in the endless war. Tau wanted nothing to do with any of it.

  "Come," Uduak wrapped a heavy arm over Tau, pulling him forward. "The thirst has me again."

  Themba sauntered close. "For what? Drink or women?" He said, making a lewd motion.

  "I have no interest in that," Uduak told the much smaller man.

  "Looking as you do, they'd have none in you either." Themba laughed, sprinting away as Uduak lunged for him.

  "Tiny man, big mouth," Uduak said.

  "He's taller than me," Tau muttered.

  "You are tiny too," Uduak told him, returning his arm to Tau's shoulders and pulling him down the Crags, towards Citadel City, a place that turned Nobles into Gods of war and women into weapons.

  REUNION

  Citadel City was not what Tau expected. It was small, less than a tenth the size of Kigambe, and looked like a cross between a military base and religious mission. On the Crags-facing side, it was protected by a thick wall that stood as tall as the average Noble. On the side facing towards The Wrist, with its days-distant but ever-present endless war, the wall was three times a Noble's height. The city itself, underpopulated given its footprint, was spacious, its skyline dominated by four towering domes, each rising high enough to be seen from three-thousand strides.

  "That one must be the Indlovu Citadel," said Hadith, pointing to the closest dome, flying a black on black flag. "The one beside it will be the Gifted Citadel, beyond them both, that's the Guardian Keep, and furthest back, that'll be the Sah Citadel, house of the Goddess."

  Tau stared at the Gifted Citadel. Its domes were black and gold and what he could see, from outside the walls, was both impressive and beautiful. It made him think of Zuri. He wondered if she'd run from her fate. He missed her and, with his mind going to painful places, he pushed the past from his thoughts, making sur
e to pray for Zuri's safety first.

  "The first city of the Chosen," Yaw said, voice hushed.

  "First on Xidda," Hadith said. "We had an empire on Osonte. We numbered in the millions and millions."

  "You really... believe that?" coughed Chinedu.

  "Believe it? It's our history."

  "That'd make the Cull history too," Yaw said, leaving Hadith with no good answer.

  The five men, along with the rest of Scale Jayyed, entered the city. There were locals bustling to and fro, but the paths could not be called crowded. Tau saw some Nobles, more Lessers, and a few Maimed, but no Drudge. The last made sense, the only Drudge allowed into the holy city were the ones assigned to the comfort lodges.

  Also unusual, the city's buildings were all single-story. Well, not all. The citadels stretched for the sky and the tallest of them was the blood red Guardian Keep. It was not just domed, it had pointed spires that reminded Tau of blades.

  "The four pillars that keep us, Chosen of the Goddess, protected and safe against all who would do us harm," intoned Hadith. "The Sah, Indlovu, Gifted, and Guardian Citadels."

  "Four? What are we then?" asked Yaw.

  Hadith smiled. "Us? You mean Lessers? We're the fodder that feeds the Chosen military's insatiable appetite."

  Themba had sidled up during Hadith's preaching. "We distract the hedeni with our dying, so the Indlovu and Gifted can kill 'em back," he explained.

  "You, again?" Yaw said.

  Themba showed teeth, shrugged, and sauntered away.

  "Where first?" asked Chinedu, managing to get through both words without hacking.

  Uduak pointed at one of the long buildings that sat just inside the city's gates. "Drink."

  Hadith was already on his way. "I won't argue."

  The drinking house was rough-adobe, with more of its interior open to the street than walled in. It was smoky and had a dirt-floor covered with scattered straw. It reeked of sweat, the tang of overcooked vegetables, and had the unmistakable stink of brewed MasMas.