by Sam Sykes
The Karnerian march was reversed immediately, and the next decade was spent with the legions retreating south, harried by the scraws, before the Karnerians could figure out how to combat this new menace with bigger bows and new tactics.
But the damage was done. The hitherto undefeated Karnerian legions had met their match. And the scraws had proven themselves a weapon that changed the world and struck fear into the hearts of the Sainites’ enemies, be they Karnerian or from the territories previously conquered by Karnerians that now found themselves under Sainite rule.
If one paid attention, the scraws had begun the longest, bloodiest conflict the world had ever seen.
And yet, Gariath thought, from up here they look like a bunch of stupid pigeons.
Gariath stared down from the ridge to the convoy below. Stretching miles long, ten humans abreast, until they numbered hundreds, the Sainites trudged across the desert in a line of blue coats and tricorne hats. Their sabers rattled at their hips, their spears were slung across the kits that bent their backs, they sipped from flasks and complained about the heat and the sand and the road.
But Gariath’s eyes were on the scraws.
Between each two lines of soldiers, a great wheeled platform drawn by horses stood. On beds of straw, the scraws snoozed as their humans pulled them through the desert.
From so high up, they looked not particularly impressive. Strange, certainly: Their heads were those of sharp-beaked birds, topped with sloping horns, wings sprouted from their backs, their forelegs ended in talons and their hindquarters looked like those of goats.
From here they looked fragile: delicate birds attached to delicate fauns, hollow bones waiting to be broken. Their humans, too, looked weak: frail little men and women wrapped in armor and coats that wouldn’t protect them, clutching weapons that wouldn’t save them.
And yet there were so many of them. Hundreds, on the march to Cier’Djaal, to add their own disease to that cesspit. And they walked so close to Shaab Sahaar and the tulwar did not even care.
Cowards, Gariath thought. Huddling in their stinking city, unaware of the human filth that lurks nearby. But then, that is how they live, isn’t it?
He looked over the ridge, to the west, where Cier’Djaal lay. He couldn’t see the city, but he could feel it, as he could feel any wound.
And without his even trying, his mind filled with them.
And he could see them clearly.
The tall rogue and the short wizard. The pointy-eared one, the one with brown hair.
And Lenk.
The humans. His humans. His former humans. There in that city, steeped in its filth, filth that they had chosen and cast him out of.
The tulwar were no different. Weak, cowardly, choosing familiar dirt and death over something brave and uncertain as the wilds. Their blades were empty boasts, hanging uselessly at their waists while humans marched arrogantly through their lands not two miles away.
Cowards.
Weaklings.
All of them. Every one of them.
He held his breath. Caught between the Sainite convoy and Shaab Sahaar as he was, he feared he might choke on the collective stink of fear if he were to draw in a whiff. Yet when he finally allowed his nostrils to be filled, it was with nothing so dramatic as fear.
Merely the reek of pipe smoke.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw company approaching: fat, gray-haired, puffing on his pipe. The old tulwar trudged up to the ridge beside Gariath and cast a look down at the Sainites. He took a long look over the column, saying nothing for a while.
“My father raised gaambols,” he said after a time. “My favorite one, a small brown-haired female, died unexpectedly one day. He butchered it, sold the meat to the humans for a pittance, and then bought a map from them. He swore his son would not grow up ignorant of the world and made me pore over the parchment. Every night he would come home from the pens and test me on my knowledge of the map.
“I memorized the nations: Um’Bagwai, Jaharla, Nivoire, Alcumbral…” He chuckled. “I remember thinking, ‘Why so many places for humans? Why don’t they all just live in one place?’ We tulwar are a vast and varied people, we need a lot of different lands for all the different clans. But humans, I thought, only came in just the one color. What did they need all the land for?”
He gestured out to the Sainites, their pale skin and fair hair.
“I had no idea that humans like this existed, back then. I had never seen any human but a Djaalic. I thought there was only just them.” He chewed his pipe, puffed out a blot of smoke. “But then, I suppose they thought the same of us.”
“No.”
The old tulwar looked at Gariath, quirked a bushy eyebrow.
“They don’t even think of us.” He swept a clawed hand over the Sainite line. “These ones think only of other humans called Karnerians.” He narrowed eyes brimming with contempt. “An entire city of warriors hangs over their heads and they give it not a thought.”
“I would not say that.”
Gariath looked to the old tulwar, followed his finger as he pointed up to the sky overhead. Painted black against the orange of a setting sun, he could see the elegant spirals of a pair of scraws as they sailed lazily through the air.
“Doubtless they have seen Shaab Sahaar,” the old tulwar said. “Perhaps they mean to avoid conflict.”
“What do they see, then?” Gariath snorted. “A collection of mud huts and rotting wood sprouting through filthy streets like weed. Not warriors. Not people.”
The old tulwar loosed a low, thoughtful hum. “The humans saw us that way once. Thus the Uprising. Perhaps you are right.”
“You’re not an idiot, then. Good. I—”
“Then again, perhaps they are also surveying the city and wondering whether we would be amenable to trade. The humans, also, once saw us as partners.”
“Maybe, but—”
“Or are they sizing up our defenses and planning for an attack? Who knows?”
Gariath whirled on the old tulwar with a snarl. “You speak in circles, old man.”
“Once you hit a certain age, you’re obligated to spew cryptic nonsense from time to time.” A yellow-toothed grin formed around the old tulwar’s pipe. “How would we convince young fools like you to do anything if we didn’t convince them there was some greater meaning to it?”
He held up a gray hand to cut off any protest, leaving Gariath seething.
“But there is a purpose to that, even. We consider all possibilities because the last time we acted in haste, it cost us dearly. It was Mototaru’s passion that drove us to start the Uprising and march to Cier’Djaal, and his hesitancy that sent us fleeing in shameful retreat, carrying our dead on our backs.”
“Haste can’t kill nearly as swiftly as cowardice does,” Gariath snarled, slapping the old tulwar’s hand away from his face. “I don’t need to know this Mototaru to know he was an idiot weakling. His hesitation to fight was what killed the tulwar, not his decision to attack.”
“Possibly.” The old tulwar hummed. “But we do not know what he saw that made him turn away. He faced many dragonmen. Bigger than you, even.”
“Then he should have fought to the last breath. Died for what he believed in.”
“Interesting.” The old tulwar scratched the hair around his chin. “So anything worth doing is worth dying for?”
“Compromise is a fancy word for cowardice.”
The old tulwar smiled. No teeth. No mischief. Something whimsical and tender flashed in his eyes, a look he might have offered a grandchild.
“Perhaps, had you been there, the Uprising might have ended differently.” He looked out over the ridge. “Perhaps the tulwar would have emerged victorious, won their freedom and their dignity.” The smile faded. “Or perhaps you would have led us to kill every human that walked or crawled or cowered in Cier’Djaal.
“Which is why I wonder, dragonman, what you want to see happen in this world.” He looked intently at Gariath, eyes
hard as rock. “And what would you do to see it.”
Gariath looked back over the ridge. In all the time that they had been talking, the line of Sainites hardly seemed to have moved at all. Perhaps they were simply slow. Or perhaps there were just that many of them. So many that, no matter how quickly they moved, there would be no end to them.
“My sons…” He choked on the words. They tasted like dust in his mouth, it had been so long since he had spoken of them. “When they were born, I knew they would live a hard life. We are Rhega, we are made strong for that reason.” He bit back the dust, forced iron into his throat. “But it wasn’t until I went out there, into the world of humans, that I realized there would have been no place for them. And even though they were gone, I didn’t…
“I thought I had found a place,” he said. “But I was wrong.”
He curled his hands into fists. Felt his claws pierce his palms and make the blood flow between his fingers.
“For them, for us, people like us,” he growled, “there will never be a place. Not unless we carve it out.”
For a brief moment, his nostrils caught the scent of something. Between wisps of pipe smoke, something hot and fiery and overpowering in its fury filled his nostrils.
But when he turned to see where it had come from, the old tulwar was already walking away, a cloud of smoke haloing his head. And through it his voice cut cold and clear as a blade.
“Then,” he said, “I suppose you’d better do exactly that.”
He thought to speak, but another scent caught him before he could. The familiar reek of humanity filled his nostrils, but much closer.
He looked down. Among the scrubgrass of the ridge, two miles away from the line, a quartet of Sainites picked their way through with small spears and nets. Foragers, he suspected. Or deserters. Something like that.
And the old tulwar’s words rang through his head. What would he do to carve out a place in this world?
His sons were long gone. He had buried them, grieved, tried to join them and failed. But there were many other sons—tulwar sons, tulwar daughters, Daaru and Kudj and Kharga—who would live forever in a shadow, forever displaced, if someone didn’t start carving.
He was Rhega. He was the strongest. He was the one to fight. He was the one to survive. For so long his place had been to do exactly those things among his humans. But they were gone now. And he had to find a place once again.
Maybe that was why he stepped to the edge of the ridge and leapt off. Or maybe it was because he was angry that he went sliding down toward the Sainites. Or maybe he simply didn’t know why he opened his mouth and bellowed.
“KARNERIA! SHAAB SAHAAR FOR KARNERIA!”
But in another breath, it didn’t matter.
He was already looking at them as they looked up in alarm, and he wondered which one of them he was going to leave alive to tell the tale.
It might not work.
His breath was labored as he entered Shaab Sahaar. The crowds closed in around him, their stink filled his snout, made it hard to breathe.
They might not take the bait. There was no need to do that. You were a fool. This city can’t handle it. It’s not going to work. You’ve killed them all. It might not work. What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?
“Dragonman?”
Out of the noisome crowd, he heard a soft voice and found a small body to match it. He looked down and saw the young tulwar girl, hair still sparse beneath her chota, who quickly looked down as embarrassed colors painted her face.
Daaru’s daughter. What was her name again?
“Deji,” he muttered, softly to match her voice. He knelt down to look at her. “What are you doing here?”
“Mother sent Father, Duja, and Kudj out to buy vegetables. Some Chee Chree refugees came in and they brought things that grow. She says Duja eats too much meat, so she wanted us to buy as many as—” Deji’s eyes went wide. She looked up, the color on her face paling. “You’re hurt.”
“What?”
He looked down at his hands. Blood stained his claws, his hands, all the way to his wrists. How had there been so much? There hadn’t seemed this much when—
What have you done?
“It’s nothing.” He rose to his feet, tried to hide his hands. “I’m fine.”
“But you’re—” Deji tried to walk toward him.
“Deji!” A loud, boastful cry. Daaru came swaggering up through the crowd, his smile broad and toothy and his arms full of sacks of ripe vegetables. “You wander too much, girl. Your mother worries about your brother too much to be concerned that you might also be duwun.” He came to a halt, regarded Gariath. “You have returned. Spent much time thinking?”
Gariath said nothing. The only words he could think of were ones he did not want Daaru to hear. He merely nodded stiffly.
“Father, the dragonman—” Deji began to say.
“Ah. Squib see?”
In another moment Gariath was grateful that the lumbering hulk of Kudj—Duja riding upon one shoulder and a giant sack of vegetables on the other—precluded further conversation.
“Squib just need time to think,” Kudj rumbled as he emerged from a quickly scattering crowd to join them. “Squibs see question, want answer. Vulgore see question, want food. Take time to taste question, digest, come up with answer. Much better that way.”
“So long as you are at peace in the city, I am at peace with you,” Daaru sighed. He offered a smile to Gariath. “Though I had to do much to soothe the Humn after your… outburst. They are not used to treating with outsiders.”
“I am sorry,” Gariath said.
It might have been the first time he had uttered those words. But he knew it would not be the last.
“But Father!” Deji tried to speak up. “The dragonman, he—”
“He is still our guest, Deji!” Daaru snapped. “I will hear no more of it. Your mother is already waiting. She will beat us both if I take much longer to… to…”
Daaru looked up, aware of a crowd that had suddenly grown quiet and still around him.
It had happened so slowly that none of them had noticed it. Every tulwar, every man and woman and child thronging Shaab Sahaar’s streets, suddenly looked up to the sky, awed. Gariath did not.
For he already knew what they saw.
“Father?” Duja asked from atop Kudj’s shoulder. “What is it?”
Daaru had no answer to that. He likely had no idea what to call the great winged beast that hovered in the air over the roofs of Shaab Sahaar, flapping great wings as it surveyed the city below. Nor would any of the tulwar.
None of them had ever seen a scraw before.
“What is it?” one of them muttered. “A giant bird?”
“Chee Chree vegetables,” another grunted. “That shit they smoke gets in their food. Makes us see things.”
“What’s that on its back?” someone else asked, anxious. “Is that a human?”
But Gariath could not hear them over the sound of his thoughts.
It worked. You did it.
What have you done?
Gariath held his breath, unable to bear the scent of their fear as they watched the rider wheel the scraw about. With a shriek the beast took off, flying away from the city. The tulwar’s voices rose in its wake, a nervous tranquility breaking their paralyzed panic.
“Vulgore.” Daaru’s voice was hard as he turned to Kudj. He seized Deji’s hand, pulled her toward the giant. “I need you to take my children back to my home. Can you do this for me?”
“Kudj is capable,” the vulgore rumbled. “But Kudj not sure if that going to be—”
“More! MORE! THERE’S MORE!”
A cry rose up from the crowd, followed by a hundred more and a hundred fingers to accompany, all of them directed to the sky.
Gariath looked up. He saw the scraws flying toward the city in two perfect rows. Their feathers looked black against the dying light of the sun. The blue coats of their Sainite riders flutt
ered behind them.
“They’re flying so low. What do they want?”
“Go to the center. Tell the Humn. Grab your swords.”
“Get your children back to your homes. Hurry, damn you!”
What have you done?
He needed to ask the question only once more before it was answered.
In the warbling song of a Sainite bugle from high above. In the shrieks of the scraws as they flew overhead. In the whistle of flasks falling from the sky in their wake like black feathers.
Gariath got his answer.
He had exactly one breath, full of the reek of fear, to appreciate it.
And then the world erupted into flame.
The screams of the crowd were drowned out in the shattering of glass and the roar of waking infernos. The fireflasks burst apart on impact, tar and flame splattering across wooden buildings and dirt roads and bare flesh and chewing ravenously into whatever they touched.
The towering wooden buildings were crowned with flame. Great rows of fire blossomed across the streets, eager gardens that rose up to cut off the fleeing tulwar. The only screams loud enough to be heard over the panic were the death shrieks of those swallowed by the hungry flames.
Just like that. A few dead bodies. That was all it took to send Shaab Sahaar to war.
Or hell.
He felt a grip on his arm. He looked down, saw Daaru’s face flooded with color, eyes wide and wild. The tulwar’s teeth were bared in a snarl, his mane bristling.
“Rhega,” he snarled. “To the city center. Fight with me.”
No questions. No room left for doubt. No breath for fear. All around were the stink of smoke and the shadows of people fleeing, trying to brave the flames as even more scraws flew in, dropping another volley of fireflasks.
This was what Gariath wanted.
This war.
“To the death,” he snarled.
And with that they were off.
Leaping through the flames, leaping over bodies, darting through the smoke and tearing through the streets, they ran.