The Broken Heavens

by Kameron Hurley

  Natanial cursed. Monshara’s forces were still engaged at the wall; they had not seen the stealth Dorinah line yet.

  “That’s a good thousand,” Otolyn said, shifting in her saddle to crack her neck. The sound made Natanial’s spine tingle.

  “Five hundred, maybe,” Natanial said. “It would be impossible to get more in by ship with the Tai Mora blocking the harbor.”

  “Well, they did. Maybe they have an omajista opening a wink?”

  “Shit.” He gazed up the hill at Monshara’s support camp. Flags there were being raised hastily. A horn sounded. But in the heat of the battle below, no one heard them.

  Otolyn yawned. “I could use a skirmish to stretch my legs,” she said.

  “I suppose we should earn our keep now and then,” Natanial said. “Call for an arrow formation on my call.”

  Otolyn signaled the flag bearers to give the order. She followed it up with some enthusiastic shouting, which was one of the reasons she was Natanial’s second. She loved a good show, just as he did. There was a collective hiss and mutter of leather and armor, a shifting of melee weapons and snort of bears.

  Far across the field, the Dorinah soldiers – bearing long pikes and cudgels – pounded through the mud toward the Tai Mora. Among the tawny, dark-haired Dorinah faces he saw the darker cast and bare scalps of some outer islanders, and suspected these were a force that had been stationed offshore and delivered here very recently. As the force increased its pace, he knew his time for action was running out. He certainly hadn’t come this far to simply witness the outcome.

  The Dorinah brought down their pikes, intent on skewering the Tai Mora at the walls.

  Natanial gave the order to charge directly into their flank.

  Dogs were generally faster than bears over distance, but the Dorinah dogs had been running at pace since they landed on the shore. The Tordinian bears had yet to make their paces today. When the call came, the bears leaped forward, roaring.

  Natanial urged his bear to the front of the formation. He hefted his ax. His fighters flared out behind him, keeping loosely to the arrow formation. It had been some time since they’d run one of these, but his formation leaders were all intact, and eager. He saw the anticipation on their faces. Grist for the heavens that churned above, crunching them all into fragments.

  The Dorinah saw them move, too late. Their soldiers were already locked into their charge. They could not pivot without chaos. One young woman broke formation and was promptly impaled by the soldier behind her.

  Natanial raised his ax. His bear leapt. It swatted the legs out from under the nearest dog.

  Natanial’s mercenaries tore into the flank of the Dorinah. All was a twisted mass of bodies and yelping dogs and bears and flailing women in silver-plated armor. Natanial swung the ax using quick, narrow strokes. The Dorinah weren’t ready for close-quarter fighting yet; most had only their pikes. At this range, he could dispatch them quickly.

  He tore through gaps in armor, splitting open an arm at the elbow, a neck along the collarbone.

  The Dorinah were tough fighters. He had no qualms about cutting their dogs out of from under them. The great animals bit and snapped and snarled. He hacked into the jaw of one and it collapsed, taking its rider with it.

  In the confusion, the riders bunched up, so close that many who left their mounts were held aloft by the crush of the others.

  Natanial almost lost his seat, but was saved by the same press. He knocked the woman behind him with the butt of his ax to propel himself upright.

  A short blade caught him in the back. Nipped shallowly between his shoulder blades. He twisted, catching the woman’s arm. The blow rattled her. She lost her seat and the dagger, and plunged between his bear and her own mount, crushed in the mud and blood below.

  The sea of riders began to thin as it broke.

  Natanial rode toward the walls of Daorian, chopping at fleeing riders as he went. His mercenaries were already on the ground looting bodies.

  He didn’t see what hit him. The blow came from behind, hard enough to knock him clean from his mount. Natanial dropped into the churned-up soil, dazed.

  The breath left his body.

  He gasped, struggling for purchase.

  A rider bore down on him, pike out. He rolled; the pike slipped past his head, so near he felt the breath of it as it rushed by.

  Natanial clawed his way up. The rider turned and bore down again. Natanial stumbled among the bodies, looking for a weapon or a distraction. He spied the tip of a pike and yanked it out of the tangled ruin of a dog and rider.

  He pivoted, shoving the pike into the muck behind him just as the rider came at him. She tried to pull away, too late.

  The dog yelped, impaling itself on the pike.

  The rider shot free, thumping into the ground just ahead of Natanial.

  Natanial brought up the pike just as another melee of riders came at him. These were a mix of dog and bear riders. He noted the shiny Tai Mora armor, chitinous like the armor of beetles. The Tai Mora were in pursuit, hounding two Dorinah ahead of them – and directly at Natanial.

  He stumbled over the woman he’d unseated just as she came up with a knife. Instead of him, she lashed out at the nearest rider, one of her own, and cut the dog’s legs. The dog went down, taking the rest of the animals and riders down behind it.

  The tangle of bodies and beasts roiled. One dog, riderless, took off in the direction of the woods. Two of the bears, one with a rider caught in a stirrup and hanging off its left side, ran after it.

  The women who remained tussled on the ground. Tai Mora armor at such close quarters hindered movement, and one woman went down immediately under a Dorinah blade.

  Natanial slogged toward the remaining Tai Mora, who were now fending off three less well-armed but still formidable Dorinah women. Behind him, his mercenaries were finishing their looting and already withdrawing. He should, too. What was one Tai Mora? There were enough of them.

  But he had come here, after all, to murder Dorinah.

  Best get to it.

  He came up behind one of the Dorinah and swung hard, hacking into her neck. She jerked like a puppet. As she fell the Tai Mora woman met his look, and he realized it was Monshara, the Tai Mora general. Tai Mora did not wear any insignia marking their rank, but he knew her face; she yelled at him often enough.

  One of the Dorinah rounded on him. He punched her. She reeled back into her colleague. Monshara dispatched both of them with her weapon.

  Monshara stood with him in the bloody wreck of the bodies. They were both breathing hard. Sweat and blood caked her face. She had a bruise darkening one cheek.

  “Call the retreat,” Monshara said.

  He saw her forces moving away from the wall. He thought the line of Dorinah broken, but he was uncertain of her losses.

  Natanial found a loose mount, a bear, and rode back to his company where they were still picking among the bodies and killing any who were slow to die. There was no exchange of prisoners in Tai Mora.

  “We’re falling back,” Natanial said.

  Otolyn straightened from a body, shaking a silver ring from a severed finger. “Already?”

  “Back to camp.”

  Otolyn grabbed at the head of a woman cloven almost in two. She carved at its skin even as the other fighters mounted up and headed back toward camp.

  “Laine’s balls, Otolyn, let it be,” Natanial said.

  Otolyn carved away more skin, making raw, bloody patches, revealing all the meat beneath. Then she stuffed the bloody head into her saddlebag and mounted up.

  “War trophy,” she said, grinning. “Lot of power and glory to be found on the field.”

  She rode away, leaving Natanial alone among the dead. He hesitated to go after her, as the grinning skull put him in mind of other trophies, like the ones he had collected for King Saradyn. All that death, for nothing. As all this would be, in the end: little of it mattered, in the great scheme of things. But he wanted so desperately
for something to matter. Anything.

  Perched deep among the dead, he gazed across the dirt and turf churned into mud, thick with blood.

  The silence after battle wasn’t truly silence at all; the dying often went on screaming and wailing, clutching at their own split bellies and spilled organs.

  A woman lying ten paces from him tried to stuff the glistening mass of her intestines back into the hole in her gut. The viscera, a gleaming reveal of the interior of the body, a secret only to be disclosed in the dark of night, was vaguely sexual, and his belly clenched, tightened by the arousal of battle, the twin powers of life and death.

  Someone began to sing, a prayer for the dying, her own aria, and that moved him to action. He nudged the bear with his heel. It ceased snuffling at the mangled body underneath its paws and lumbered back toward the staging camp, pausing only to caress the dying with its forked tongue.

  5

  The funeral guests were a wet, ragged group; only a few hundred of the thousand or so in their camp came topside for the funeral. Too many above ground at once was dangerous. Though the Tai Mora had swept this area before, they often sent out patrols of birds and rangers, and too many people drew both.

  The rain continued all through Mohrai’s funerary feast. Lilia sat with Namia, Salifa, Avosta, and a handful of other white-ribboned followers, pressed close to her mentor and fellow healer Emlee. Yisaoh and her family dined at the table opposite, and Lilia noticed that Yisaoh did seem to overly enjoy eating Mohrai’s finger bones.

  “She was skinny, that one,” Emlee said, sucking the tiniest bit of marrow from a section of toe. Emlee hunched over the table, hands curled slightly with arthritis. Tirajistas treated the condition once a week, but could not stop the cause of the inflammation, just as they could not cure Lilia’s asthma. Chronic conditions resisted Tira’s embrace. The body rebelled.

  “We’re all skinny,” Lilia said.

  “Yisaoh going to speak?” Emlee asked, as Mohrai’s closest cousin mounted the platform at the center of the gathering and began to recite from the Book of Oma.

  “I don’t think so,” Lilia said. “The less Meyna notices her, the better, I suspect.”

  When he was finished, Mohrai’s cousin called on Lilia to speak.

  Lilia rose carefully from her seat. Emlee assisted her, and Namia tagged along behind her. A few beribboned Dhai stood when she did, and there was a little hush as Lilia made her way to the dais.

  Rain soaked into Lilia’s coat and seeped into her shoes. She took her time getting up onto the dais, and waited two long breaths before she spoke.

  “On this,” Lilia said, “the anniversary of Faith Ahya’s ascendance and the death day of our own Mohrai Hona Sorai, I remind you that we’ve faced impossible odds before, guided by our divine Kai, fueled by our faith in the vision that Faith Ahya and Hahko had for our people as a strong, united force against the evils of war, oppression, and slavery. It is that faith that unites us. And it is that faith that will sustain us, and ultimately save us, in this dark time. Catori Mohrai knew that. I know that.”

  Namia leaned her cheek into Lilia’s good hand. Lilia had shaved Namia’s matted hair some time ago; the hair had grown back dark and straight. Braids kept it from tangling again. Half the girl’s jaw hung lopsided, as if from some old blow to the face that never healed properly. What had been done to the girl was written on the scars and poor healing of her bones.

  What Namia must have endured often came to Lilia in her in dreams, only in her dreams it was not Namia it happened to, but Lilia. And then her dreams took her back and back, to the Seeker Sanctuary while one of the Seekers kicked and hit her with a large cane. Taigan’s hands on her back. The rush of air around her as he pushed her from the cliff’s edge. Down and down. When she woke, she would claw at her eyes, fearing they were gone, and find herself running her hands over the little pocked scars on her cheeks from the birds that had attacked her, thinking her dead.

  Lilia smiled down at Namia. “They believe us broken,” Lilia said. “But Namia here is not. I am not. You are not. We are not. Many of you have joined those sabotaging supply lines and food stores. Your efforts are appreciated. We may be but flies on their backsides, but enough flies can overpower even the greatest beast.”

  A ripple of beribboned heads raised their open hands high above their heads. Only a few at first; then a dozen, two dozen, more.

  Lilia met Yisaoh’s gaze; Yisaoh frowned up at her from the soggy feasting table, damp hair stuck to her cheeks. Yisaoh shook her head. Meyna sat across from Yisaoh, back turned from Lilia. She smiled as she conversed with one of her husbands, Hadaoh, arms wrapped around her eldest daughter, Mey-mey, almost five; and the child Ahkio had pronounced Li Kai, little Hasao, nearly two years old. Her other husband, Rhin, studied Lilia carefully, his long face turned down in a grim expression.

  Lilia raised her hands. “Let us give thanks to Oma, for the life Mohrai has led, and the life each of us will be forging for ourselves in the days to come.”

  She led the group in a recitation from the Book of Oma, one of Ahkio’s favorites, something he had bandied about Kuallina during their last days there.

  It had the desired effect. Those who had not raised their hands joined her in the repetition of the words, the comforting embrace of the known. Even little Namia babbled beside her, humming the rhythm of the words, if not fully articulating them.

  When it was over, Lilia limped back to her seat. Her hands trembled, but she fisted them tightly and firmed her mouth. A few of the refugees from the camps in Dorinah approached her, all beribboned, murmuring encouraging words.

  She sat back with Emlee and Tasia. Tasia crawled into her lap as Meyna made her way up to the platform hand-in-hand with Hasao.

  They ascended the hill together. Though still so young, it was clear Hasao was a relation to Ahkio; she had his deep eyes, the narrow chin, petite features and shiny, silky hair. Meyna must have been triumphant at that; she certainly pointed out the similarities often.

  Meyna patted Hasao on the head, then reached into her own coat and took out a small hatchet.

  A susurrus of concerned voices rippled through the crowd.

  “This is my favorite tool,” Meyna said. “Catori Mohrai and I argued often about it. She asked why I carried it, when we are a pacifist people. I told her it’s useful for hacking out toxic plantlife. For cutting back the thorn fence. I’ve used it to enlarge our chambers, below ground. I’ve cut supple bows for little Hasao’s small hands. Yes, it’s a useful tool.” Meyna lowered the hatchet and came to the front of the platform. Her wet tunic clung to her curvy form; her pregnancy was just beginning to show. “But Catori Mohrai, and some others among us, they see a hatchet as a weapon, not a tool. They intend to use our greatest strength in the worst possible way. Yes, this hatchet is useful for many things, but it will not take down a bonsa tree. It’s not meant for that. It won’t carve through stone. You will never lose an infused weapon to it. It serves one purpose, and to use it otherwise would be an attempt to make it something it is not.

  “We are like this hatchet. Sharp. Versatile. Adaptable. But all that goes away when we apply ourselves to an endeavor we were not designed for.

  “Who are the Dhai? We are enduring. Loving. Peaceful. Intelligent. We understand that we must exist in balance with this world, not seek to bend it to our will. We know that our greatest strength is each other. Unity is our strength.”

  Meyna paused, gaze sweeping the crowd. “This is why I am welcoming Mohrai’s cousins and child into my family.”

  Lilia nearly choked on her lukewarm tea.

  Meyna tipped her head toward Lilia, and smiled. Such a broad, knowing smile.

  Lilia turned to see Yisaoh’s reaction, but Yisaoh was nowhere to be found. Not even a breath of smoke indicated where she might have gone.

  Meyna continued, “You have spoken to me about the dangers of the Woodland. We all understood there would be challenges. We also knew it was temporary. While some see
k to break us, to throw us into disorder, to muddy our purpose as a people, I have not forgotten who we are. It has been my honor, and Catori Mohrai’s honor, to have spent these last few months finalizing our preparations to take the Dhai to a new homeland.”

  Audible gasps. A few cheers. Cold fear traveled up Lilia’s spine.

  Emlee leaned in and whispered to Lilia, “Did you know of this?”

  “No,” Lilia said.

  Meyna’s infuriating smirk quirked at the corner of her mouth. “This is why I urge continued patience and perseverance,” Meyna said. “This is a not a time for rash actions and revenge, but reflection on how far we have come, and how much further we will go, together, in rebuilding the people of Dhai on a safer shore.”

  The murmurs grew louder: questions about where they were going, and how, and when.

  But Meyna hushed them. “Now is not the time. Let us celebrate Mohrai’s life today. Trust that Catori Yisaoh and I are bringing you to safety, true safety, on another shore, as Faith Ahya and Hahko brought their people to Dhai. We are not a place, my kin, we are a people.”

  Lilia’s mind reeled. Cheers went up.

  “To the Dhai people!” someone shouted, and the crowd took it up.

  “To the undefeated Dhai!”

  Lilia pushed out of her seat, head spinning. Abandon Dhai? Now, when she was so close to taking her revenge? Had Yisaoh known about this? And where in this world could Meyna possibly take them that would be safe? Lilia did not want to leave Dhai; that had never been the plan.

  She took up her walking stick, and stumbled away from the feasting, ignoring the attention she drew from the ground for her abrupt exit. Let them see she was displeased.

  Namia followed. Salifa got up to join her, and a handful of other beribboned guests, but Lilia waved them away. The optics of Lilia walking out with several hundred others holding high their ribboned heads could have been construed as actively hostile. She was fine with rudeness, but naked hostility when she did not know the full extent of Meyna’s plan would do her no favors.