by J. S. Bangs
There were thirty of them. Thirty was all the bronze weapons they had. Navran hoped it would be enough.
“Here,” one of the men said. He dropped into a crouch and pulled down a broad leaf for Navran to peek through.
Perhaps a hundred feet away, a tiny bamboo hut crouched at the edge of a small open space cleared of palms and other growth. An iridescent bird flitted through the clearing. A woman, naked from the waist up, with a skirt of woven palm fibers, stepped out of the hut with a child on her hip.
Navran drew in his breath sharply. “You said these were bandits. Not women and children.”
A moment of chatter between the men in their own swift, sharp language. After a moment, the one who had spoken answered him in pidgin. “Woman no kill. Here village. You go.”
He wouldn’t have killed the woman anyway, but at least the guides agreed. Navran nodded. The guides stepped aside. He waved for the men behind him to follow.
They crept forward in a crouch until the little hut was thirty feet away. The woman had her back to them, speaking to someone unseen. Any closer and they would be heard. Navran raised his hand in a fist and counted on his fingers. One. Two. Three.
They ran from the bush shouting.
The woman turned and screamed. She grabbed the child and bolted. Next to her was a man. Navran took hardly a moment to look at him. He stabbed the man in his shoulder, and the bandit went down screaming. Navran led the charge toward the rest of the settlement.
The men overtook him, charging past him through a wall of brush into a much larger ring of huts around a little creek. Shouts and screams. He saw more women and a number of men with bamboo spears and stone-tipped clubs in their hands. Dark-skinned men with long straight hair, wearing the skirts and bare chests of the island natives. His own men wove among them, swinging bronze weapons.
“Stop!” someone shouted.
Navran charged forward, his heart thundering with adrenaline. He swung a sword at a fleeing man, and saw from the corner of his eye a few women scattering into the jungle.
“Stop! We beg you!”
He turned and saw one of the bandits on the ground, his hands raised, one of Navran’s men holding a bronze sword to the man’s chest.
He spoke Amuran.
“Leave him!” Navran commanded.
“Spare me!” the man that Navran had been chasing said. “Have pity on us!”
Navran lowered his sword. “Arms down!” he bellowed. He whirled swiftly and pointed his sword at the man’s chest. “Don’t run away. Surrender, you who want to live! But anyone that flees may forfeit their life.”
The man dropped to his knees and raised his hands. “I surrender,” he said. The word surrender sounded throughout the village behind him.
Navran tapped the man with his foot. “Into the center of the village!” he shouted. “Bring them all in!”
The man rose to his feet, his hands still in the air, and he stumbled toward the plot of open dirt in the center of the village, where three of his comrades had already been gathered. With much grumbling and cursing, the other captives were herded together: about a dozen in all, unarmed, standing in a circle with their palms out facing Navran’s forces.
A dozen Amurans.
He should have recognized them the first time he saw one of them, but the different style of dress had perplexed him for a moment. He paced around the circle of captives, staring at them fiercely.
“Tell me who you are,” he said at last.
One of the men threw himself to his knees. “Have pity on us, my lord. We’ll crew your ships, take up arms—whatever you need.”
Navran grumbled. “I’m trying to get off of the ships and avoid taking up arms. But I want to know where you came from, and what a village of Amurans is doing here in the middle of the Ten Thousand Islands.”
The man glanced back nervously. “We are… most of us were sailors. Castaways or… or deserters. We made ourselves a little village here.”
“And the women?”
The man glanced into the jungle with an anxious glance. Navran guessed that the man’s wife was among those who had fled. “Some of us took local girls for wives.”
“Are you bandits?”
The man shook his head furiously. “We fish. But we can take up arms, we can—”
“I don’t need your arms,” Navran snapped.
“We all know how to sail, too.”
Navran looked at the man curiously. “Who do you think I am?”
The man’s hands began to shake. “Pirates,” he said softly.
Navran laughed. “We’re not pirates, and I’m not looking to press you into my crew. No, we are…” How to explain? He gestured to the north. “We are what’s left of Amur.”
“What’s… left?”
“Surely you saw the star fall.”
The man’s eyes grew wide and his hands dropped to the ground. “What happened?”
“That is a long story,” Navran said. “The star fell and cleansed the land of Amur, leaving only a wasteland. We are here with thirty-five dhows, the last survivors of the last city, looking for a place to come ashore and make new homes. And the chief of Mai Tak promised us room if we would destroy the bandits living on this side of the peninsula.”
The man took a deep breath and seemed to recover some of his courage. He shook his head. “We are not bandits, my lord. I mean, perhaps at times we have raided the men of Mai Tak, but they attack us as well, and the chief hates us because we are foreign.”
Navran drummed his fingers on the hilt of his sword. “I see,” he said.
It seemed only too likely, given how reluctant the chief had been to let Navran and his men land. And if they somehow made peace with the chief, how long until he turned around and attacked Navran’s people in turn? They would never trust the Amurans, and he had no more time to beg for pity.
He glanced aside at the men around him. Yavada stood there, clutching a short spear and watching Navran curiously. “We Amurans are few in this place,” he said. “Is that not true, Yavada-kha?”
“It is,” Yavada said.
“I think we shouldn’t make war against our own.”
An expression of consternation clouded Yavada’s eyes. “But that leaves us worse off than before.”
“No,” Navran said. “We have no more choices. We cannot waste time appeasing petty kings and making war against men of our race. Men who know the island, the weather, and the people.”
A glimmer of understanding on Yavada’s face. “Ah.”
Navran turned back to the captive he had spoken to. “What is your name?”
“Pat-pat,” the main said. Then he shook his head. “Aptu, in Amuran.”
“Very well, Aptu. I am Navran-dar, king of Virnas that was, and Heir of Manjur. Will you and your men swear fealty to me?”
The man trembled. “King of Virnas?”
“He is,” Yavada answered in a strong, imperious voice, attempting for once to sound like the majakhadir he had been. “And it was his leadership which let us escape from Amur.”
The man fell back to his knees and pressed his forehead to the ground. “We will swear.”
“Very good. Swear to me, you and every man here, and we’ll show the chief that Amurans still have a little power in them.”
* * *
This time Navran didn’t keep the dhows at the entrance of the bay. His own ship, the biggest of the ragged fleet, sailed in as deep as they dared, and the little vessel that carried the Amuran “bandits” rowed in closer. Nor did they wait for the men of the town to send out canoes to meet them. The ships threw down their anchors, they cast their shore vessels into the water, and Navran and his men began to row.
The islander canoes were faster, and word reached the chief ahead of them. Navran saw people scurrying along the shore, messages running toward the hilltop compound which was the chief’s house. By the time Navran reached the shore, there was a crowd waiting for them.
Mostly women and unarmed comm
oners. He and his men splashed through the last few feet of seawater and came onto the sandy beach. The Amurans that Navran had rescued stood in the center of the crowd, unarmed, but alive.
“Where is your chief?” Navran asked as soon as he had reached the head of the formation. He carried a bronze sword, and he had spears at his back.
Aptu stepped forward and repeated Navran’s words to the men in their own language. There was a burst of shouting and pointing, which Aptu cut off with a barked command. He pointed up the hill.
“He’s coming.”
“I’m not waiting,” Navran said. He marched ahead. Everyone followed him.
The path through the village ran by the palm-thatched huts, tame black-feathered birds scattering as he and his men tromped past. They crossed through the densely-clustered huts and into a wide space between the village and the chief’s residence, cleared of palms and filled with flowering shrubs and tall, spiky grass. That was where they met the chief’s party.
He had brought men of his own: a dozen surrounded him, bearing spears with heads of obsidian and sharpened bamboo stakes. Cruder than Amuran bronze, but just as fatal.
The two parties stopped with twenty feet between them. The chief stood in the center of his men, still wearing the brilliant parrot-feather cape and his crown of pearls, but his expression was twisted in anger.
Navran gestured to the Amurans behind him. “We found the men you asked for, chief.”
Aptu, with a hint of an impetuous smile, stepped forward and repeated Navran’s words to the chief.
The chief’s answer was swift and contemptuous. “I told you to kill these men,” Aptu translated. “Not to bring them to my door.”
“You asked for their heads,” Navran corrected. “And I have brought them, still attached to their bodies.”
Aptu translated, and the chief scowled and spat. He growled a few angry words.
“He says we have lied, like all Amurans do. He tells us to leave his land or he will kill us and burn our ships.”
He was awfully bold, given he was outnumbered and had inferior weapons. Navran would give him a chance, though.
“I saw the far side of this island,” he said. “It is sparsely inhabited. Let us settle there in peace, and we will leave you alone.”
The chief’s reaction to Aptu’s translation with a laugh. “He says he is the lord of all of this island and its five sisters. He says you are usurpers and thieves, and he will not suffer us to live in his domain.”
Navran sighed. “I had hoped to do this peacefully,” he muttered.
Aptu translated that, though Navran hadn’t wanted him to. The chief scowled.
“There is no peace,” Aptu repeated after the chief, “when you bring the curses of Amur down on me.”
He barked to his retainers. And the men with their spears charged.
In a moment Navran had his sword out and stepped aside to avoid the stake aimed at his stomach. A flick of his sword and he sliced a gash down the man’s side. He was a man, an ordinary man, with a name. He bled red blood.
The armed men behind him charged into action. The unarmed Amurans scattered. Navran slashed at another islander with his sword. The clatter of bronze against bamboo. Shouts. He dodged past the attacking spearmen and put the point of his sword against the chief’s stomach.
The man’s eyes grew wide. He shouted a desperate command. The sound of battle stopped.
Navran glanced back. Three of the islanders lay on the ground bleeding. Probably dead. He saw one or two of his own bleeding, and one man lay supine with a comrade tending to his wounds.
The chief fell to his knees. He said something.
Aptu rose from where he had hidden in the grass beside the road. “He begs for his life.”
Thudra’s head sailed into the miry midden outside the walls of Virnas.
“No,” Navran said. “What must be done must be done.”
He thrust his sword through the chief’s throat. The man’s dying scream was swallowed in a gush of blood.
“Kill anyone that resists,” Navran said. “We’re going to the chief’s home.”
He didn’t wipe his blade clean. He heard Yavada shouting orders to the men behind him, taking the weapons from the chief’s retainers and passing the obsidian-headed spears to the Amuran castaways. Aptu ran through the grass and fell into place behind him. He marched up the hill toward the chief’s residence.
Screams and shouting sounded before him. A dozen bamboo-framed buildings stood within a low fence woven from thorny branches, decorated with the skulls of birds and small animals. A trio of men holding spears stood in the doorway, watching Navran advance.
Navran stopped. “Tell them to throw down their weapons and they’ll be spared.”
Aptu relayed the command. The men looked at each other. They threw their spears to the ground and fled. The shouting within the compound redoubled.
Navran ignored it. He marched through the gate, then waited for the soldiers behind him to catch up. He addressed the soldiers as they came through the gate behind him.
“Catch everyone you can. Look for the chief’s wife and children, if they’re still here. Don’t kill them. Bring them to me.”
Ahead, in the center of the compound, was a long narrow building. Navran strode through the door and ducked under the low lintel.
The interior was dim. He heard a whimper as he entered. He blinked, waited for his eyes to adjust, and searched through the room. An elderly woman crouched in the far corner, clutching a young girl to her chest.
The chief’s mother, Navran assumed. Aptu had followed him. “Tell her we won’t hurt her.”
Aptu muttered something. The lady seemed not to hear him. It didn’t matter. He was looking for something else—there, on the far side of the room. A wide cotton blanket, of Amuran manufacture, Navran guessed, and a fan made of brilliant parrot feathers.
“Help me bring those outside,” Navran said. “The closest thing we have to a throne.”
A moment later he and Aptu had taken the blanket and the fan outside. Neither of them was sure what to do with the fan, but it indicated wealth if nothing else. Navran had Aptu set it against the wall while Navran sat down on the blanket.
The compound was crawling with Amurans. Against one of the walls a cluster of islander women and children had formed. Navran sat down on the blanket and took up the Nectar posture. He heard Yavada shouting. But when the majakhadir came within sight of Navran, he spied the fan and the brilliantly colored mat and straightened. He bowed to Navran.
“My lord and king,” he said, and he smiled. “It seems you have made yourself king of this place.”
He wished he hadn’t. But it was done; he was a king again, and such doubts were not to be shared with the majakhadir in his service. “Send messengers to the ships,” he said. “Tell them to come ashore. Once the captives have been organized, have someone bring them to me one by one, with Aptu to translate. Then take someone and go into the town to find out what sorts of taxes or tribute the chief used to exact.”
“Taxes?” Yavada said with a glint of greed in his eye.
“I intend to cut them in half,” Navran said.
“Is that wise? Who knows what you’ll need the money for.”
“Our men are few, Yavada-kha. We can’t afford to fight the locals. We need them to accept me.”
Yavada’s expression immediately snapped into one of seriousness. “Yes, my lord and king.”
Ruckus sounded around him. Yavada disappeared into the milling groups of Amurans, and a few minutes later two men appeared guarding a line of six women. They women varied in age from thirty to thirteen, by Navran’s guess. They stood before Navran’s blanket with their heads bowed. A few of them wept.
“Who are these?” Navran asked. “The old chief’s sisters?”
“No,” Aptu said. “His wives.”
“Wives. Six of them?” He looked over the line of weeping women and shook his head. “And what do they want?”
/>
Aptu cleared his throat. “They beg you to marry them instead of killing them and their children.”
“Marry them?” Navran laughed, and his thoughts fled to Utalni, carrying their child on the dhow. “I have no time to marry anyone. But tell them that I’ll spare their lives. Put them in one of the houses of the compound and guard them.”
After that it was one thing after another—the women and servants of the compound, the old chief’s brothers who were captured and begged for mercy, then the rich men of the town wearing necklaces of shells and pearls on their wrists, who plied him with gifts and begged for his favor.
News came that the first of the dhows were already unloading their passengers. They found lodging within the town for most of them. They dislodged the regular inhabitants of the city, and Navran sent people to scout out places for new construction immediately. If they were to survive, they couldn’t make enemies of the village. For now they were numerous, and their bronze easily overcame the bamboo spears of the chief—but that wouldn’t last long. If they made enemies and the people of the islands turned against them, they would be outnumbered a hundred to one.
No, he needed to make friends from the first day. He made promises to the families whose homes were occupied. He ordered the trade goods left in the dhows to be distributed in the village as gifts. The mood in the compound lightened. One of the men found a store of palm wine. He ordered it opened and shared with everyone who came, Amurans and islanders alike.
And then he saw her. Utalni, walking with pained steps up the slope with the old midwife at her elbow. He rushed to the gate.
“What’s happening to her?” he asked.
“The child comes,” the elderly midwife said.
The child comes. His heart beat. “Get a room for them,” he said. “Any of them. Give them—”
Two of the Amuran castaways rushed forward and helped the woman bring Utalni through the gate. She lifted her head and looked at Navran. Her eyes were watery with pain, but she managed a small smile.