by JC Kang
She glanced at Hati, who’d invited them along. From the spot where he sat with Lahi, he waved and flashed a broad grin. She smiled, too. They knew, for sure, and must’ve planned this.
Kaiya looked over her shoulder. Tian laid out a fur blanket for them to sit on. She suppressed a giggle at the uneven stitching of his pant legs, deciding that the only things he’d ever sewn before were battle wounds.
They cast their lines and waited. And waited.
The cold air bit through her doeskin and furs. Kaiya edged closer until she eventually huddled against his left side. He tensed up at her touch.
Tian inched away as he reached for another fur. “Dian-xia—”
“Kaiya.”
"—your legs will get cold.” He draped it over her lap.
Nothing would make her cold now, not with the warmth rising in her chest. It was so hard to imagine this thoughtful gesture came from the duty-driven, emotionless wizard’s automaton who had forcibly shaved her head.
She leaned back into him and sighed, her breath hanging in the crisp air. He’d exacerbated her fear and sense of vulnerability months ago, but now provided nothing but a reassuring sense of safety.
Was it because he’d saved her from the ogres?
The fishing should’ve given her plenty of time to consider the question, but instead, his comforting nearness addled her thoughts. She stole a glance up at him through the corner of her eye, memorizing the angle of his jaw. He seemed to have achieved a meditative state, oblivious to her presence.
Pouting, she turned her attention to the dissonant interplay of noises around her: the river splashing lazily by, its waters low in the winter months; the drumming of a woodpecker; the rustling of underbrush as small animals foraged for food; the frequent chattering of birds. Yet beneath the cacophony was a primordial harmony, an unrealized symphony of sounds that lacked a glue to hold them together.
She began humming her own tune, linking the various sounds into a concert of nature. Her hum built up confidently, the undertone taking over as the main sound. As it reached its crescendo, all other noises stopped as if the wildlife had stopped to listen, leaving just her voice.
Her fishing pole jerked.
Kaiya fell silent and stared at the rod. She struggled to her feet, her legs wobbly from the long hours of sitting. The particularly resilient fish took advantage of her poor balance, and she found herself plunging into the icy waters.
She floundered wildly in the water. “I can’t swim!”
No sooner did the words leave her lips than Tian jumped in after her with a splash. The water only came up to his waist. His mouth gaped.
The Moquan spy, gullible like when he was a child. Giggling, Kaiya stood and waded over.
The villagers’ looks of concern transformed into laughs.
Shivering, she clasped his hand. “Are you all right?”
With a grin, he put a leg behind hers and twisted, dumping her completely into the water.
It was freezing! She let out a cry of surprise, which came out as bubbles. Getting her head back above the water, she wrapped her legs around his and twisted him back into the water as well.
Laughing, Hati urged them out of the pool. He held out dry furs. “Take off your clothes, or you really will freeze.”
While Lahi built a fire, Kaiya wrapped the fur around herself and peeled off her wet clothes.
Tian apparently had no compunctions and stripped off the tunic clinging to his body. His belly was toned into six hard squares, his sculpted chest and arm muscles rippling as he flexed against the cold.
Her stomach fluttered like a dragonfly’s wings, and heat flared inside of her.
Lahi winked at her, pausing before she draped a fur over Tian’s magnificent body. Kaiya turned her head and loitered over to the warm flames. She held the furs tight around her as she sat.
Hati walked Tian over and pushed him down next to her. He pressed them close together. “You have to sit close, share each other’s warmth.”
Tian’s face flushed an interesting shade of crimson. Hers must have been equally red. Beneath the fur blankets that separated them, they were naked.
Neither said a word while their clothes dried.
The walk back to the village was awkward, even as they huddled close together for warmth. With no fish in hand, only one thing had come from their fishing expedition: Yuha scolded them for getting their heads wet in the dead of winter.
She looked at Tian out of the corner of her eye. Maybe something more had come of it.
CHAPTER 44:
Wrestling
Normally skilled enough to slip through Hati’s wrestling guard, Tian found his face pressed into the dirt ring, his arm twisted into a simple hammer lock. Not hard to get out of with patience and tenacity, but his heart wasn’t in it today. He tapped on the ground, indicating his surrender.
Hati loosened his hold. “You’re unfocused.”
Tian accepted the chief’s son’s hand and clambered to his feet. Though his grasp of the language was improving, he still stumbled over some words. “Sorry I can’t give you a better fight.”
“You teach me a lot of tricks.” Hati grinned. “Maybe I can teach you something.”
Tian raised an eyebrow. The Maki excelled at wrestling. As one of the favorite pastimes among the men, they used it to impress women and settle disputes. Even so, his foreign Moquan grappling techniques always gave him the upper hand. “A new hold?”
“Yes.” Hati puckered his lips and mimed hugging. “You will concentrate better.”
The instigator of the fishing trip fiasco! Despite his knack for sniffing out ambushes, Tian had been caught flatfooted. Pressed up against the princess, with nothing more than two fur blankets between their bare skin, it had taken all of his discipline to stay calm. How mortified the princess must have been! He glared at the youth. “You don’t understand. Where we are from, she is the chief’s daughter. I am her...” How could he explain? The Maki had no word for servant or retainer. “...piglet.”
Hati swirled a finger around the side of his head, a Maki sign of confusion. “What’s there to understand? Here, I am the chief’s son. It doesn’t matter who my favorite girl is.”
With a sigh, Tian threw his hands up. If only things were that easy. “She only sees me as a piglet.”
Hati puffed out his chest and pounded it with a palm. “I am an expert in these matters. Let me teach you.”
Not that it would do any good. Tian pointed in the direction of the iridescent moon, obscured by the clouds. Hopefully, Hati wouldn’t look. “It’s almost time for weapons training.”
Scrape, scrape. Kaiya sharpened stone arrowheads with Lahi. The Metal Men’s encroachment into the forests had turned this man’s job into everyone’s responsibility. Though no hostilities had broken out, Kaiya’s own experience with the Bovyan scourge told her it was only a matter of time.
She held up the arrowhead and ran a finger across its edge. Sharp. Dangerous enough to take down game, and even the ogres whose ambushes had dwindled during the winter. Teleri armor posed a greater challenge.
“You have to hit the heart.” Lahi tapped on her chest.
Kaiya shrugged. “It has to get past the armor first.”
Lahi laughed. “Very easy.”
Was it? The Maki hadn’t gone to war in thirty years, and even then, their opponents wore leather jerkins. Hopefully, they’d never have to test their stone weapons against steel. “I hope so.”
Lahi peered at her. “You’re a beautiful girl. His armor will melt with a smile...” She cast an alluring smile and twirled one of her braids. “...and body language.”
Oh. That, Kaiya could do, and do well, probably better than Lahi. It wouldn’t work, though—not on Tian. Even though he’d warmed up, too much damage had been done in Iksuvius. She was still his burden, and would be lucky if he considered her a friend again. But why did she want it? Want more?
And yesterday! It should’ve been embarrassing, being naked
with nothing but a blanket between them. Instead, her heart fluttered even now, just thinking about it. Whatever she felt, it was real. More real than Ming’s smooth words sending her head spinning, or Rumiya beguiling her with magic.
If only things were so simple. She was a princess, he was a spy.
Snow flew in her face. Lahi leaned back, laughing. “You look hot. Your face is red. You make too much of it. You are a girl. He is a boy.”
Kaiya’s eyes widened. Of course. In the Wilds, away from Hua’s customs and conventions, they were just Kaiya and Tian. All it took was a Maki girl to remind her.
Pacing the village field, Tian scanned the young Maki men facing each other in two lines, all holding cloth-wrapped stone knives in a defensive stance. Like the last lesson two days before, a handful of new faces had appeared, likely from neighboring Maki villages.
After Chief Nuwa’s test, Tian had immersed himself in teaching combat to the males. Besides their superior wrestling skills, the natives also excelled at archery, perhaps more than anyone back home, given Hua’s shift from bows to muskets.
With no armed conflict since their cousins from the plains invaded a generation ago, their skill with spear and knife left a lot to be desired.
“Now,” he barked.
The pairs all engaged in a fixed-pattern drill, quickly closing and disengaging. They were improving quickly, none more so than the chief’s son. If not for the cloth wrapping around the knives, it might have turned into a bloody mess.
Clapping pattered from the edge of the field. Tian turned to look.
Ma Jun, ostensibly there to help teach tactics based on formations, leaned back against a fallen log, smiling and chatting with Lana. Whatever she’d clapped about had nothing to do with the training. She wasn’t even paying attention. Meanwhile, her twin Lahi craned to watch the men. Or like as not, one man: Hati. Definitely a distraction.
Though none more than the impromptu swim the day before. Tian returned his wavering attention to the training. “Again.”
The pairs repeated the same pattern several times, getting better each time.
“Good. Let’s...” What was the word? “...spar.” Tian circled his finger in the air and his students all sat cross-legged in a ring around him. “Who wants to go first?”
Hati jumped to his feet and pointed at Tian. “You and me!”
Tian smirked. Perhaps the young man thought his luck from the morning would continue.
The two circled and engaged in a furious exchange of cuts and stabs. Tian evaded or blocked all of Hati’s attacks, while raking his knife across the young man’s neck and wrists. When the opportunity presented itself, he poked him in the armpit.
Hati stepped back, bent over with his hands on his knees. Despite the thorough beating, he grinned.
Unwrapping the knife, Tian swept his gaze around the ring. “These knives will shatter on the Metal Men’s...” They had used the word before, when describing the Bovyan’s chainmail. Even now, the men scowled at mention of the big men whose voracious taste for meat had ravaged the large game supplies. “...skin?”
Hati shook his head. “Roroi.”
Right. “Backs of knees are open. Sometimes their hands are unprotected.” He pointed at his face. “And their metal hat’s openings. You must be fast and accurate.”
One of the new men threw his arms up, speaking a mix of familiar and unfamiliar words in a strange order. Tian looked to Hati and raised an eyebrow.
“Our cousins, the Omiki,” he said. “Their words are similar. He says it’s impossible.”
“Difficult, not impossible.” Tian stroked his chin. “Use distractions.”
A wide-eyed youth, Kosa, waved his hand. “How?”
How indeed? Tian opened his mouth, but then said nothing. Dozens of different ideas came to mind, yet none seemed practical given the tribespeople’s resources.
Hati pointed toward the edge of the field. “Kaiya.”
Heads turned. Tian ventured a glance. The princess stood next to Lahi...smiling? After their fishing misadventure, it should have been days before she so much as glanced at him. Yet here she was...
Tian hit the ground, with only his reflexes preventing the wind from getting knocked out of him. A heavy weight rested on his chest.
He looked up.
Hati sat on top of him with a grin, knife blade at his neck. “Distraction.”
The men all laughed. Lahi clapped.
The chief’s son learned well. Tian could have twisted past the knife and put Hati in an armbar, but decided against it. Let him savor his victory; let his people see him as a leader.
And Tian would save the technique for the village wrestling tournament.
The wind howled outside Yuha’s lodge, reminding Kaiya that winter had yet to loosen its grip on the Wilds. Around the fire pit, the children Waka and Nadi held bowls of stew, chattering with their grandparents and aunties Lahi and Lana about the upcoming wrestling tournament.
Conspicuously absent was Tian, who always accompanied her when she ate with the shaman’s family. He’d avoided her all day. Probably still embarrassed from the fishing trip. Kaiya looked up from her own bowl of stew.
Yuha was staring at her.
Returning his gaze, she raised an eyebrow.
“The world acts in cycles, guided by the spirits.” He twirled his hand in a large circle. “In ancient times, even before the sky rained fire, the Turquoise Men enslaved our people.”
Kaiya nodded. He must be referring to era before the War of Ancient Gods, when all humans were slaves to the Tivari. Still, it had nothing to do with village life or the upcoming tournament.
“And then, the Star Spirit, motivated by his love for the Willow Beauty, liberated us.” He pointed up to the smoke hole. “The time will come again. The stars say in a year, when the Eye of Kannon greats the white and pearl moons. The spirits have spoken to me.”
Kaiya followed his finger up to the night sky. Lord Xu had said as much, that the dance of the Heavens mirrored events among mortals. “Why do you tell me this?”
“I—”
The door flap opened. Kaiya turned.
Tian. He gawked at her, eyes wide. The flap started to close.
“Come in, come in.” Yuha jumped to his feet.
Tian froze in place and stared at the ground. He must’ve been really horrified by their catastrophic fishing experience. He might need an imperial order to forget about it. With a tentative step, he crossed the threshold and looked up. “Why are the Omiki coming?”
With a laugh, Yuha motioned for Tian to sit. “They live south of the river, it’s easy for them to paddle across and visit us.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Tian plopped down next to the fire, about as far away from her as possible.
Yuha stroked the feathers in his necklace. “The spirits carry news on the winds. The Metal Men expand. The tribes are worried. But now, there is hope. Since the Warrior From Beyond the Wall arrived, the ogres have retreated.”
Kaiya covered a giggle. Tian would get the fancy nickname.
“Of course.” Tian threw his hands up. “It’s winter and the trails are snowbound.”
Yuha shrugged. “Perhaps. But rumors of your skills spread far and wide. Many wish to learn from you. Many in this village believe you are our tribal guardian. Like the Star Spirit a thousand sun cycles ago.”
At last, Tian’s eyes met hers. “I’m one man. There’s little I can do. To stop the tide of Metal Men.”
“One man can bring hope. Sometimes, to an entire people.” Yuha’s gaze shifted to her. “Sometimes to a woman.”
Was Tian blushing? Or was it the play of firelight on his face?
Kaiya’s face was probably just as hot and bright as the flames.
Yuha grinned. “I think that man should prepare himself for the wrestling tournament.”
Nothing brought out village enthusiasm like the winter wrestling tournament, which Tian had entered at Hati’s urging. Held under a new white m
oon on the Winter Solstice, two months after their arrival, it would determine the village’s representatives for the tribal tournament held in spring.
As was the custom, single women dipped their hands in berry juice and marked their favorite competitors with palm prints. Wearing a dozen handprints like a leopard wore its spots, Hati flexed his muscles to rampant cheers. The defending village champion’s toned physique glistened in the flickering bonfire lights.
Lahi came last, claiming her spot over Hati’s heart.
No other woman would dare make such a statement, on any man, let alone the chief’s son. Tian grinned for his young friend. He looked around at the dozen competitors, all boasting a handprint or two.
Only his bare chest remained unmarked.
Not that it mattered. Even though the Hua had all been accepted as members of the tribe, most of the village held him in awe. The girls were all too timid, and there was only one girl that mattered.
A firm hand clamped on his shoulder and spun him around.
Hati stood there, smiling. He wrapped an arm over his shoulder. “Do your best. I want to fight you in the last round.”
“I hope so.” Tian grinned back.
“You might need some luck,” the princess said from behind him.
Hati turned him around.
The princess stood there, a shy smile gracing her face. Looking down, she pressed her palm over his...heart. Around them, the tribe erupted in whoops and cheers.
Her hand lingered there, warm, sending tingles through him. Her dark eyes looked up through her lashes. “Win.”
His heart pounded under her hand. He bowed his head. “As you command, Dian-xia.”
“Kaiya,” she corrected, dropping her hand and backing off.
Blanking his expression, he turned to watch the first bout.
After weeks of him participating in impromptu duels, Moquan joint manipulations had worked their way into the Maki repertoire of wrestling techniques. In his own first face-off, it took longer to defeat the man than it had in all previous meetings with him. By the bout with his third opponent, weariness began to creep into his limbs.