by Evan Winter
There was no heat in Jayyed's voice. He could have been asking about the weather. Tau paced, letting his muscles loosen. He nodded at his Umqondisi.
Jayyed stripped off his tunic and stretched, his body a mass of scars and corded muscle. He picked up his sword and shield and stood, ready. Jayyed was the taller, stronger, and more experienced man. Even the blood in his veins claimed superiority.
Tau put down his swords and pulled his tunic free. Retrieving his weapons, he twirled them through the warm air. Without a word, Jayyed attacked.
In the beginning they flowed with each other, letting their swords dance. Then flow gave way to force and, with dulled swords that could not manage the task, they fought as if to kill. Circling, attacking, defending only when they must, they pushed each other, both men seeking to send the other past the limits of his prowess.
Tau fought with the fervor of the insane, knowing he would maintain the pace until he won or his heart burst. It was what made him the fighter he was. His edge did not come from his blood, body, or brain. It did not come from Gifts. It was that he desired mastery more than he desired breath. It was that he wanted revenge more than he wanted to live.
Already Jayyed was flagging and had taken to pushing off and away from Tau, using the gaps in battle to catch his breath. Then he began using the gaps to waste his breath.
"We are a people besieged," he told Tau, his voice thin with the strain of speaking and defending. "We have all lost something, someone."
Jayyed threw a feint at Tau's face. Tau slapped it away and sent his Umqondisi stumbling back, when he predicted and countered the older man's actual attack.
"My mother lost her parents to a raid and I lost my wife to one," Jayyed said.
Tau was not interested in Jayyed's losses and fired his blades at the man's shield and sword.
"My daughter lost her mother. She never forgave me for not being there. I was in The Wrist, fighting. She hated me for that. For protecting others and not being there to protect them."
Soft stories, Tau thought, clenching his jaw and switching from sword form to form, mutating and enhancing each as he went. He darted in, Jayyed reached up to block a sword that should have been there but wasn't. Jayyed tried to correct. He was too late and Tau's weak-side blade cracked him in the ribs. Jayyed skipped back, out of reach, favoring his injured side. Tau gave him no rest.
"My daughter is Gifted," Jayyed wheezed. "I found out from my neighbor. Jamilah was already gone when I returned. Our hut empty. No goodbye."
Tau hit him again, forcing a cry of pain. Old man, thought Tau. Weak man, he thought. Cross-Caste masquerading as a Lesser, he thought.
"She excelled at the Citadel." Jayyed was backing up, unable to string together a consistent defense. "She fights now. Powerful. Calls down Dragons on hedeni. Relishes— Ah! Cek!" Tau had taken him in the thigh with the edge of a blade. "She... she relishes her role in the deaths of Xiddeen."
Tau saw a killing blow and took it. Jayyed blocked and Tau sent in another kill strike, this time with his strong-side. Jayyed darted left, moving away from Tau's swing, swaying with weariness. Tau, tasting blood from his overworked lungs, dashed forward, reengaging.
"...Horrible," Jayyed said. "Think her... like that. Anger, hate... burning her alive."
Tau stabbed out, hitting Jayyed in the shield arm.
Jayyed yelped and grimaced but kept talking. "Her pain turned to hate... Xiddeen don't need to wipe us out."
Tau hit him twice and Jayyed fell to a knee before scrambling back to his feet.
"This war... what it's turning us into. It's doing the work for them."
"Philosophy?" Tau growled, swords whirling for Jayyed's head.
Jayyed blocked one sword, ducked the other, and ran backwards in an unsteady lurch. "Was afraid for my daughter and all Chosen. Was a Guardian Council advisor. Had access to everything military. I searched... history, battles. The Xiddeen... everything."
In spite of himself, Tau slowed. He wanted to know what Jayyed had found.
Jayyed took the slower pace as an opportunity to mount an offense of his own. "Was looking for... answer," Jayyed lunged, seeking a desperate hit. "Decisive win!"
Tau turned his master's blade, wrenching Jayyed's wrist, and forcing a curse from the exhausted man.
"...Analyzed attacks, numbers, tribes... each raid. Know what I found?" Jayyed punctuated the question with a thrust of his shield, meant to smash Tau in the face. Tau jumped back, braced himself, and slammed the points of both swords into the shield's centre. Jayyed grunted. He'd have a bruise from that.
"More Xiddeen than we thought... beyond Rend. Far more."
Tau attacked, working in a pattern that would require Jayyed to raise his shield. When Jayyed did that Tau would deliver a killing blow. The sword master would not last another three crosses. He was already dead.
"We can't beat them!" Jayyed raised his shield and Tau smashed its underside, sending it higher, exposing Jayyed's core.
Jayyed didn't even try to block and Tau stabbed the point of his weapon into his Umqondisi's chest, pulling the force of the blow as he did. If they had been fighting with sharpened blades Jayyed would have been skewered. Tau's sword would have pierced his chest, his heart, and come out his back like... like Aren.
It was over, but all Tau felt was pain. He looked down. The point of Jayyed's sword was dug deep into his side, drawing blood. Had they fought with sharpened blades, Jayyed would have gutted him.
"Can't overcome them" Jayyed coughed. "Not as we are. Cross-Caste soldiers, if we even have time to birth, raise and train them, can only prolong the inevitable... Only one way for Omehi to survive... Only one... Peace..."
"Peace?" Tau dropped his blades and batted Jayyed's sword away from his side. "Peace?"
Jayyed went to his knees, holding himself up on shaking arms. "Our real war is with the Cull." Jayyed retched. Nothing came up.
Tau was furious. "You want peace with the hedeni so we can fight fairytale monsters?" Jayyed had turned his victory into a draw and it burned. "I am one man, mourning one man, and will never have peace as long as the Nobles who murdered my father are alive. How can the Omehi or Xiddeen do what I cannot, when our history holds almost two hundred cycles of killing? You ask too much!"
"You sound like the Royal-Nobles of the Guardian Council before they relieved me of my duties."
Tau scoffed.
"When they dismissed me, I came to the Isikolo to create a new weapon for the Chosen. We need to survive the war long enough for peace to become possible." Jayyed laughed, an empty sound. "I came to train and breed better soldiers, better killers, because if the Royal-Nobles won't accept peace then dealing more death is the only way I know to help my people."
Tau said nothing. The whole thing made him sick. He gathered his swords and walked off, leaving his kneeling master in the dirt.
"Tau," Jayyed called after him. "Watch for sacrifice counters. Your enemy doesn't have to win for you to lose."
Tau ignored him. He was thinking about the Jayyed he'd known on the first day of training. The Jayyed who had told a Scale of Lessers that, though men had their differences, they were nothing compared to their similarities.
Two hands, two legs, one heart, one mind. Nobles shared more with Lessers than they didn't. They were more akin to Tau than they weren't and to say different was to speak lies.
Tau's limits were not decided by his birth or nature but by the bounds of his determination and the extent of his efforts. That was what Tau believed and the things he was going to do would be the proof. He would show them all.
CHAPTER NINE
LESSER
The day after he fought Jayyed and the day after that and the day after that, Tau slept no more than three spans a night. His life was offered like a sacrifice to the sword. Yet, when the moon had cycled, he was forbidden to attend the Scale's next skirmish.
He railed against the decision, demanding to speak with Jayyed, who had not come to tell him this hi
mself. Aqondise Anan was stoic in the face of Tau's anger and told him nothing could change the order. Word of the duel had reached the Isazi and, though Kellan Okar had relinquished his right to justice, Anan explained that Jayyed believed it best for Tau to remain beyond easy reach.
When his Scale prepared to leave, Tau went to confront Jayyed. He was met by the men of Scale Njere. They were polite, but insisted that Tau remain in the barracks.
Tau's sword-brothers returned before dawn on the next day. The skirmish had been close, but they lost. Tau threw over his cot and yelled in Hadith's face, who, shadowed by a brooding Uduak, took a lesson from Anan and accepted Tau's anger.
That day and the next and the next, Tau beat, battered, and embarrassed his sword-brothers, as if doing it would make them better, or soothe his disquiet. The lack of sleep, the overwork, the stress, and tempers caught up to him, and he woke with a chill. He stumbled his way to the practice yards, made it through the morning run, and collapsed. No one could make him leave until Jayyed came. Tau, feverish, threatened to fight his Umqondisi. He demanded they finish what they had started. Jayyed and Anan dragged him to the infirmary. He spent two days burning off the sickness.
On the third day Jayyed visited. He asked Tau if he was trying to kill himself. Tau, the fever gone, spoke as if he were still in its grasp. He told Jayyed he needed more time, that the days were too short for all he had to do. Jayyed told him that every man, woman, child, Lesser and Noble was given the same time in a day, and no more.
The next morning, Tau was first on the practice yards and last to leave them. He battered the flaxen practice dummy, hitting it so hard its dented helmet spun in circles on its thin head. He sparred without relent and, even weakened from the fever's aftereffects, he pushed himself harder than anyone else in the Scale.
When his sword-brothers left the yards, he fought mock-battles with himself, replaying every sparring session. Then, when his body's exhaustion could no longer be denied, he sat in the yards, eyes closed, reenacting every skirmish in his mind, mentally correcting the errors in his sword work. Still, it would not be enough.
Jayyed's theory of training had been meant to turn cross-Castes into the fighting equivalent of Petty-Nobles. Even so, Tau found no fault in Jayyed's methods. They produced superior results and those results did not depend on lineage.
The best way to become a better swordsman was through intelligent effort spent on swordplay. The more effort put in and the faster the fighter would become better. Jayyed had the right of it, and Tau was trying. He was giving everything he had but feared he could not match the Citadel's three cycles in the Isikolo's one.
The time remaining before Tau's cycle of training ended was not enough for him to overcome a disciplined and trained Greater-Noble's natural advantages. A man, like Kellan Okar, would still be his better.
Startling the guard on top of the Isikolo's nearest wall, Tau threw his swords to the ground and yelled into the night. He went to his knees, sitting on his legs in prayer position, but he had nothing to say to Ananthi.
What could he say to the Goddess who had allowed his father to be murdered and who had made Tau a Lesser, so justice would be impossible everywhere but in his dreams? How could he treat with a creator who had given him the will but not the way?
A burst of lightning caught his attention. It illuminated the black sky, forking a dozen times, and striking the distant Roar like a spear. That was rare. Storms and rain did not come often to Xidda. Tau waited for thunder. It came, booming across the distance, its sound reaching him in the same breath as the thought that promised to change the course of his life.
Tau rocked on his heels. He saw a way, a path waiting to be walked, and it frightened him beyond measure because he no longer knew if he had the will. He thought to forget it, ignore it, reject it. He could go to bed, join his fellows in sleep, wake in the morning and do as they did, training, laughing, drinking, and fighting in a war without end, against an enemy that Jayyed believed could not be defeated. He could let the memory of his father fade and become a great Lesser, a man with the skill to stand mere steps behind the Nobles on the Omehi's march into history's pages. Or, he could be more.
Or... he could be more.
Tau, on his knees, closed his eyes, took slow breaths and let Isihogo take him.
ISIHOGO
He was in the practice yards but the training grounds and grasslands were covered in mist. He saw no guard on the indistinct walls of the Isikolo and the sky rolled, as unsettled as The Roar. Tau looked down at himself. He was glowing and knew it wouldn't be long. He stood, felt relief that his swords had come with him and he drew them, hands shaking, bile rising. He resisted the urge to expel his breath and flee this evil place. He stayed and the demons came.
The one that saw him first was monstrous. It stood half again as tall as Tau, was covered in mottled chitin and had two long limbs tipped with pincers. It scuttled towards him on six spiny legs while chittering from a circular maw that opened and shut reflexively, displaying rings of teeth that went back into its throat.
Tau twirled his swords with a bravado he did not feel. "Come on!" He charged.
The creature skittered to a stop, pincers frozen aloft. Tau used its confusion to land the first blow. His strong-side blade slammed into the monster's right arm and claw. It shrieked at him, withdrew the arm and, with its other pincer, snapped for his neck. Tau blocked with his weak-side sword but the creature shoved his blade back, clamping down as it did, almost catching his head. Tau drew back and pulled his sword from its grasp, using both blades to attack the monster every place he imagined it could be weak. He broke small pieces from its shell but managed little else.
In the distance, hidden by mist, Tau could hear an ululating call that made the hairs on his neck stand. He didn't dare look. His courage was failing. He focused on the fight he had, frantic to get around the monster in front of him so he could face both it and the incoming other, but the pincered monster could not be beaten.
His fear grew, threatening to overcome him. He would not be able to face the demons one-on-one and it was too late to leave Isihogo by expelling his breath. The demons would tear him to pieces before he could escape that way. There was only one possible end, but he'd known that when he came.
He was going to die horribly, but knowing that and facing it were different and, in that moment, Isihogo became truly dangerous for Tau. As the demon behind him closed in and the one he faced lashed out, Tau could no longer ignore the underworld's immense power.
He felt it all around him and it would be a simple thing to draw it into himself. He could use it to stop them, to prevent the demons from tearing him apart. He could use it to blast them to pieces, to escape, to save himself. The power was there, offering itself as the pincered demon caught his strong arm and snapped the bone in two.
The pain and shock hit Tau at the same time and, without thought, he reached for Isihogo's offering. The second demon got him before he could take it. The creature closed it jaws on the back of his neck, cracking his spine and dragging him to the ground. He fell, powerless and crippled, his body broken, his mind not far behind.
The unseen demon bit him again while the pincered monster scuttled over, one of its carapaced legs stabbing through the skin and bone of his right hip as it hurried to feed. With his spine severed, Tau could not feel the leg or his ribcage being torn open by the two demons. He could hear them though, as they slopped up his innards and shook his body with their jostling.
When a third demon got to him there was only room for it by his head. It bit into his cheek and jaw, its teeth slicing into him and tearing the ruined flesh from his face. That he felt and the pain shattered him, splitting his consciousness into a thousand slivers, each one a suffering, a scourging without end. Tau's tongue, mouth, and jaw had been torn to shreds but as he died he found a way to scream.
He came back to the world in sections. He sensed a leg, his mouth, the beating of his heart, his eyes. His own body was di
sjointed, a thing apart, hard to reconcile and impossible, in those early breaths, to control. Moving from Uhmlaba to Isihogo was always hard. It incapacitated men inexperienced with it. Dying to demons was infinitely worse.
Tau opened his eyes. He was on the ground at the edge of the practice yards, moaning, rocking. No time had passed but he had been to the underworld, fought there, almost taken its power into himself and come close to a true death. His nerves were on fire, his limbs trembled, and his mind was misery.
He tried to sit, couldn't, and let himself return to the earth. He lay still, waiting for the shock to pass, the loamy ground warm against his cheek and lips. He'd soiled himself.
It was in this state of suffering and degradation that Tau knew he'd been given everything he wanted. The Goddess had answered his prayers. She'd shown him how to make one span worth a hundred, one cycle worth a lifetime.
Her gift was a generous one. If accepted, it would make him the greatest warrior in Omehi history, and all he had to do was fight and die to Isihogo's demons over and over and over again.
COUNT
"What sme... whassat smell?" Chinedu coughed out. "Tau, that you?"
"It's not me," Tau said, rolling out of his cot, eyes heavy, head heavier.
"Is that you still in bed," Chinedu clarified.
Tau thought he'd been able to wash himself well enough the night before. He'd been so tired though.
"Surprised is all," Chinedu said. "First time I'm up before you, neh?"
"It was a long night in the yards."
"Not sure how much... how much value is in it." Chinedu raised his hands, empty palms facing Tau. "Don't mean anything by that. Way you fight is... is evidence enough. Just hard to see how swinging a sword at shadows helps, is all."
"I think you're right. I won't stay out as late. Not if it means I'm sleeping in."