The Wardog's Coin

by Vox Day

So, of course, we attacked.

  I don’t think I even killed a single orc in that last assault. Blade dancing might sound like some sort of thing fairies do, but it’s truly a sight to see. Those elf swords cut through iron as easily as good steel cuts through cloth.

  The elf king didn’t kill three orcs in one blow like the other elf, the one with the ribbons, did with the gobbos, but he must have cut down at least twenty that I saw with my own eyes, and probably twice that many that I didn’t. I tried to stay close to him in case he got into trouble, but it soon became obvious that he needed my help about as much as Bigarse needs my help with a flagon of ale. It turned out that three-to-five isn’t actually a fair fight, after all, not if you’ve got the Royal bloody Bodyguard of Merithaim as your van.

  Seeing the rest of his cavalry and more than half of his infantry destroyed finally convinced Ulgor to give up. The elves was sensible and didn’t chase him. They just sent a few scouts to harry him along and see that he didn’t change his mind. I figured the orc chieftain lost three hundred boars, thirty-five hundred goblins, and around four hundred orcs, which was damn near half his army. He might not care about the loss of the gobbos, but losing all his heavy cavalry would keep him from sniffing around the elflands for a while.

  Not that it was any concern of mine or the Company’s, of course. Now that Ulgor was retreating with his tail between his legs, there was a good chance we’d be free to go home too. I heaved a mighty sigh and wiped the sweat from my eyes. The elf king might be glad he had our swords when he needed them, but I didn’t get the sense that the elves liked us all that much more than they liked the breeds. But I had to admit, they came to our aid when we’d needed it most.

  Now I had the after-battle task I hated most: totting up who had drawn the Black Queen.

  Bigarse drew her. Capitaine would have to promote someone from the ranks. Looked like he took an axe, the way his skull was damn near split in two. Reposer en paix, caporal. You was a good one.

  Shady was dead too. He was lying underneath the corpse of a boar, not far from the corpse of a boar rider with one of Shady’s knives in its eye. He said the failure with the other boar pen had been the mage’s fault, not his, and I believed him. I'd be sneaking out of the barracks alone next winter.

  The Bastard was dead, gutted by a pair of tusks. Heimet was dead. Being in the reserve hadn’t kept him alive. Gille la Guillée was all right. He took a trotter to the head when we was run over and missed the rest of the fight, but he’d be fine. I could identify Aubelet only from recollecting where the three of us was standing. He’d been trampled by the boar that run us over, and his head was nothing but grey and red slime. I slit the thong that held his coin around his neck and slipped it off the leather. The capitaine liked to keep them, give them out to the new men. Said it was a continuation, or some nonsense like that, like the spirit of the old wardog would watch over the new one.

  So I collected the blackened old coins one by one, from veterans who knew they’d die in battle one day and from farm boys who never dreamed they’d die at all. They piled up in my hand, until they started to overflow and I finally picked up a fallen goblin banner to serve as a makeshift coin purse.

  “What’cha doing, Sarge?”

  I turned and saw young Denisot, his right arm and chest covered in green and black ichor. His eyes was clear, as if the horror of the battle had left him untouched, and I wondered that the one man truly ready to die today had survived.

  “Just seeing who made it, who didn’t,” I said. “It was a bad one today, lad. They’re not all like this.” I bent down and retrieved another coin, this one from Loyset, a northerner who’d joined the Company the winter after me.

  “You want mine, Sarge?” Denisot pulled his thong out from under his filthy armor and proffered the coin.

  “No, lad. Not today. Go find One-Eye. He can probably use some help with the wounded.”

  “All right, Sarge.”

  I watched the young man make his way across the corpse-strewn battlefield. He was a good one. I hoped I’d never need to collect his coin.

  In a way, they wasn’t money at all: They was seeds, and the corpses from which I plucked them was the flowers that grew and blossomed from them. Next winter, the capitaine and I would travel through the towns and villages planting more seeds, and more of them would bloom the following summer.

  I stared at the crimson garden around me. Then I kneeled down and retrieved another seed from a cut and faded flower.

  The End

  Qalabi Dawn

  Shabaka watched impassively as the carrion crows descended upon the scanty remains of the morning’s kill. The heavy fullness in his stomach made him yearn for the shade of a Kuruku tree, but he could not yet allow himself to stretch out for an afternoon nap. The kill had been a good one, but costly, and there were decisions to be made. The pitiless sun was nearing her apex, and before she disappeared into the purple darkness, his path must be determined.

  Amar’nya was the tribe’s best huntress, but today she had been careless, and her left foreleg was now shattered due to the panicked thrashings of the swala she had slain. It would not be long before the cursed priests would hear of her mishap and arrive, brandishing their long knives, eager to send the lovely Chiu off into Baasia’s dark embrace. The ways of the Neheb-Kau were hard and hateful, but so was life in the Qalabi.

  The desert is cruel, Shabaka thought, but we are crueler. Thus we survive. He fingered the stub of what had once been his tail, bitten off by a hyena when he’d been only a cub. It was his curse and the bane of his childhood, but he was grateful for it now. Without it—or, rather, with it—he would not be who he was today. Shabaka la-Mkia. Shabaka No-Tail.

  He turned to face the north and felt a momentary spasm of fear. All too soon, the Man legions would be marching. Their warring tribes had finally made a reconciliation, and soon the great ones of their Empire, bored with peace, would turn their attention to their southern borders. The legions would march, and the metal-shod feet of the Dead God’s soldiers would pollute the holy sands of the desert. Demonspawn, they call us. Shabaka had first tasted mwana blood some years ago, but he feared the Amorrans, and not without reason. They did not come to hunt or even to conquer. They came only to kill. Shabaka stared into the distance, towards the great river that brought life to his barren home, but his keen eyes saw only memories. He raised his hand to the four parallel scars hidden beneath the fur on his left cheek and remembered….

  “Why do they hate me?” he asked Nana, as she stood beside him, watching Semna’s cubs at their rough play. His cheek still had not healed from the slash that Twusre, the eldest, had given him three days ago for doing nothing more than daring to meet his eyes.

  “They hate you because you are different.” His mother smiled consolingly, exposing her long, red tongue and a broken canine. “The priests wanted to send you to Baasia after you lost your tail, but I did not let them. The cursed fisi had already taken your brothers and your sister from me—I was not going to lose you as well.”

  “How did you stop them?”

  Nana smiled mysteriously.

  “You would not understand, my darling. But your father was very brave and reminded them that being tailless did not prevent one from being a warrior. There was no violation of the Law. They argued with him for a long time, but after he killed two of them, they saw the justice of his argument and left you free to make your way in the world.”

  She sighed and gently caressed his neck with her rough tongue.

  “I am your father’s favorite, and so you were protected from the priests. But that which saved you also made you a target for all the other cubs. Their mothers have taught them to hate you because they hate me. Your missing tail only gives them an excuse.”

  “Will they always hate me?”

  Nana bared her teeth thoughtfully. She was a fine huntress, with powerful shoulders and darkly spotted fur that was rich with an unusual golden hue. Shabaka thought she was the most
beautiful of all the Chii, and he was not the only one. It was said that his father had fought more than a dozen opponents in half as many years to keep her.

  “Until your tail grows back,” she told him. “Or until they learn to respect you.”

  “How can I make them respect me?”

  “They are already teaching you how to do that, my poor little cub. Their hatred will make you strong. Your loneliness will make you hard. As time passes and you survive, you will become ruthless.”

  She growled, low in her throat, and her lovely eyes grew hard.

  “And then, my son, they will do more than respect you. They will fear you.”

  I have strength. But do the People? There was only one way to learn. Failure meant death, but failure to act ensured the destruction of the tribes.

  Shabaka nodded to the yearling who had woken him as he commanded and glanced up at the darkening sky. The sun was descending rapidly in the west, and the priests were already here. He reached out and gathered his dagger belt then rose to his feet. Both blades were in their scabbards, he noted as he cinched the tanned ngamia hide around his waist, but he did not think he would be needing them tonight. This night would be one for tooth and claw.

  Little attention was paid to him as he quietly joined the others who had gathered around Amar’nya to pay their last respects and say their farewells. She lay under a tree, occasionally licking at her broken leg. The huntress was more popular than he’d realized, Shabaka thought, seeing the grief water that was glistening in more than a few eyes. Nor did he fail to note the three large figures standing off to the side of the gathered coalition, waiting patiently for darkness to fall. Shabaka bared his teeth at them. The priests were Dumai, so they would be strong, but slow.

  No one needs to die. But there was sorrow in his heart all the same. Death was inevitable, but it often came sooner than was necessary. Shabaka took a deep breath. Then he strode quickly to Amar’nya’s side.

  “Bind her leg,” he commanded loudly. Before anyone could react, he pointed to a young huntress. “Go and find her food, that she may eat.”

  There were several disapproving growls, and not all of them came from the watching priests.

  Mirgissa, one of the oldest huntresses, confronted him directly, before any of the priests could do so.

  “Who are you to speak, la-Mkia? You have no voice here tonight.”

  Shabaka eyed her grizzled muzzle and hid an amused smile. Mirgissa was clever, and he suspected that she knew perfectly well what he intended. Judging by the speed of her reaction, his father had probably instructed her to play this part. Good, this makes the first step easier.

  He bowed his head respectfully.

  “I have neither tail nor voice, and yet I speak even so.” He hesitated, knowing that from this moment, he could not retreat. You must go forward. You have no choice! There is no other way! He steeled himself and roared out the ghafula, the ritual challenge.

  It was less than a minute before Khepren roared back his answer, but to Shabaka it seemed like an eternity. The clan chief walked slowly forward to stand in front of him, and the shadow of his lean figure twisted and danced before the fire. The watching tribe gasped to see Khepren in his mwana form. Like the priests, Shabaka's father Khepren was mchawe, a shapechanger, and he was sending an unmistakable message to everyone by choosing to meet his son in the defenseless form of a Man.

  But what was his message? He would not fight, that much was clear. But did he seek death rather than dishonor, in spite of Shabaka’s plan?

  “What is this, Father?” Shabaka growled under his breath.

  Khepren smiled faintly. His eyes had a distant look to them, as if he was staring at something out beyond the light of the fire.

  “I have been Jumbe of the Usiku-Chiu for sixteen years, my son. Would you have me roam the veldt as a tribeless one?”

  “You know why it is necessary. This path is harder, but there is honor in it.”

  “Honor?” Khepren laughed, a deep rumbling low in his throat. “There are few who would see it that way.”

  “Honor is in the act and the knowledge. You know the truth. I know the truth. The others who know nothing, they do not matter.”

  Khepren nodded.

  “Well spoken, my son. Of all my cubs, I am the proudest of you.” He bared his teeth again. “Do what you must do, Shabaka.”

  Shabaka felt grief water fill his own eyes as his father slowly turned around in front of him. Khepren’s naked manskin was bare and yellow in the firelight as Shabaka extended needle-like claws from his left forepaw.

  I am sorry, father. I am truly sorry.

  He struck quickly. His claws were only half-extended, so although blood flowed immediately from the three slashes on Khepren’s right shoulder, the wounds were not deep. A surprised jeer rose from the watching warriors who suddenly realized that they were going to be cheated of a deathfight. As they roared and hissed their contempt, Shabaka watched his father walk off, alone, bleeding, and humiliated, into the darkness of the desert night.

  The hardest part was over now, but there was still much to be settled. Shabaka’s anger grew as he heard the warriors heaping scorn on one whose strength none of them had ever dared challenge. He found himself almost hoping that one of them would try him now. Then too, there were the priests.

  A big Duma approached him. It was the one who had spoken out earlier. He was warier than he had been before, and perhaps he sensed that not everything was as it seemed. An intelligent priest, then. “You are now Jumbe,” the priest told him. “Do you deny us the Mwisho?”

  Shabaka glanced over at Amar’nya, who was coolly watching him, her great golden eyes calm and seemingly unconcerned about her fate, which now rested in his paws.

  “There will be no endings here tonight,” Shabaka said, “unless you refuse to leave now. Go, before I lose my patience and send you to Baasia myself.”

  Shabaka drew himself up to his full height, which still came up to only the big Duma’s chin.

  The powerful shapechanger stared down at him, although it was hard to tell if it was respect or simply irritation concealed behind his dark eyes.

  “Baasia must have her blood,” the priest told him solemnly.

  Shabaka repressed the urge to snort derisively. The goddess needed blood? All he dared permit himself was a short, dry laugh.

  “Oh, she’ll get that, mchawe. She’ll get that. I promise you.”

  The moon died and rose again before Khepren returned. The fur on his left side was badly torn, and he walked with a limp, but he was accompanied by twelve young warriors, all marked with the sign of the Assur tribe. As they came closer to the Usiku camp, Shabaka could see a deep wound over his father’s left eye, which was bruised and swollen shut, but there was also the proud fire of triumph in the one that remained open.

  “Greetings, Jumbe,” his father said. There was a faint air of irony in his voice, but Shabaka pretended not to hear it.

  “Greetings, Father. It gladdens my heart to see you. But your wounds are still fresh—what took you so long to cry the ghafula?”

  Khepren coughed, and winced, placing a paw to his wounded side.

  “I think he broke half my ribs,” he told Shabaka. “What do you think took me so long? Did you think I would run out and challenge the first chieftain I could find? Young fool! No, I took my time and made sure to find a toothless old nyani I was sure to beat.”

  He bared his teeth.

  “Unfortunately, the former jumbe of the Assur-Chiu was a damn sight tougher than he looked. Took him a long time to die. But die he did, and as soon as I recovered, I brought you these cubs. They’re young, but they’re strong and well-blooded.”

  Shabaka nodded and examined the twelve warriors. They stared back at him without fear, a good sign, to his mind.

  “Your new chieftain has brought you to me,” he told them. “He is my father, but he serves me now. Has he told you why this must be?”

  One of the young warriors
, whose great height made Shabaka suspect he was a shapechanger, stepped forward.

  “Jumbe Khepren has spoken, and we obey. We understand what he has taught us. It is necessary. You will be Kubwa Jumbe, and the People will be saved.”

  Shabaka bared his teeth, pleased. Most of these young ones would not survive what was to come, but this one might. A strong body was good, but a quick mind was even better.

  “Well said,” he growled. “What is your name?”

  “Ikkur, Kubwa Jumbe.”

  “Then you, Ikkur, shall be first of the Usiku Kisu, my desert knives. You all shall be my claws and my teeth, and together we shall make the People strong. We must be strong, so that when the legions come, the People will resist them as one.”

  Shabaka spoke with confidence, as was expected of one who intended to make himself Kubwa Jumbe of the People. But even as his words sparked a fire of fanaticism in the young warriors’ eyes, he could feel his own doubts dancing through his mind.

  We will resist. We will fight. But can we win?

  The summer passed, and events unfolded much as Shabaka intended. Of the thirty young warriors he sent out among the tribes, twenty-one were slain in the ghafula. Nine survived the test, although three would never fight again, and only four were ultimately successful in their challenges for tribal chieftainships. But his greatest fear did not come to pass, as all four stayed loyal to him, and they brought him forty more warriors to replace the fallen in the ranks of the Usiku Kisu.

  Six of the sixty-eight Chiu tribes was not much, but it was a start. As his power grew, so did the fame of the Usiku Kisu. One enterprising chieftain even began to imitate his methods and managed to conquer two tribes this way, but by that time Shabaka had seventeen tribes loyal to him, and it was a simple matter to surround the clever mimic’s camp with a hundred warriors and demand his surrender.

  That chieftain—Tjel of the Mahali, the Kurka, and the Ndoro—was wise enough to quickly grasp the realities of the situation, and he readily submitted to Shabaka. By the time the moon rose a fortnight later, Shabaka realized that he had gained not only three more tribes without a single drop of blood being shed but an exceptionally skilled lieutenant as well. For the first time in many moons, he began to feel a sense of optimism about the future.