Their dominance didn't make sense. There was no denying Tug and Issi were long-legged and fleet, but running barefoot in the woods, everyone else suffered their share of setbacks and injuries: stubbed toes, cut soles, stepping into bolt ants' nests. This by itself should have caused them to lose at least sometimes, but it was like the gods of winds and woods were always lifting the pair of them from harm.
One morning just like every other, the young Half Soldiers assembled north of town amid the smell of mossy rocks and morning dew. Like always, Tug and Issi sprinted ahead, quickly disappearing from sight.
Within half a mile, Joti slowed, limping, letting the others outstride him. He was soon alone. He crouched down, scanning the foliage alongside the trail. After a few minutes of careful searching, he spotted a streak in the mud to the left of the path. A rock had been stepped on, skidding it through the soil. Past it, the damp grass was half flattened. Jodi followed the bent blades until he tripped over Tug napping in the grass. Issi lay a few feet further away.
"Interesting," Joti said. "You must have run so hard you dropped dead."
"Nah." Tug lumbered to his feet. He didn't look remotely concerned or ashamed to have been caught lying. "You didn't see nothing."
"What I see is two cheaters who are about to be whipped until Fardo has to stop and make himself a new whip."
Issi moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tug. Joti had to tip back his head to meet their eyes.
"Swear you won't tell," Issi said. "Or we'll knock your head so hard the memory will roll right out of your ear."
Joti narrowed his eyes. "I don't think you can catch me before I get back to the training grounds. You see, all the time you've been sleeping, I've been working."
He spun and ran as hard as he could. He probably could have outlasted them both, but he'd made a fatal miscalculation: their legs were longer, and for short distances, they could run faster than his fastest sprint.
Several minutes later, they finished with him, leaving him in an aching, muddy ball. When the pain retreated enough to let him move around, he stood to wash himself off. Their beating didn't seem to have broken anything, so Joti dragged himself back to the sparring ground.
There, Kajo looked up, raising one graying eyebrow like a banner. "Done so soon?"
"Tug and Issi have been cheating," Joti said. "Instead of running, they've been napping in the grass."
"So?"
"What do you mean? So they shouldn't win. They should be punished!"
Kajo curled his lip. "Careful there. Squeal too loud, and someone might mistake you for a pig to make the morning's rashers."
Joti's whole face went hot. "They're lying to you! If that doesn't matter, then I just ran nine hundred miles."
The battle-scarred man jerked his chin to the north. "Two miles for coming in last. And two more for your disrespect."
Too shocked to argue, Joti put in his miles. He stumbled through the rest of the day, knees growing stiffer with each hour. When his day finally ended, and he returned to the family tent, his father took one look at him and asked him what was wrong.
"Our morning runs," Joti said. "The winners are cheating. Lying about how far they're running."
His dad stuck out his lower lip and tapped his chin. "So who are they cheating?"
"Everyone! No matter how far I go, Tug and Issi say they've gone further. It's supposed to be a contest!"
"You are out on the plains with Tug and Issi. You hear a howl. The wolves are upon you! There is no fighting them—all you can do is run. Tug says he can run eight miles. He falters after four. Issi says she can run twelve, but stops after five. Both are eaten—and you are still running. Tell me again, when they lie about making themselves strong, who exactly are they cheating?"
Joti didn't know what was more exasperating: that the liars were going to get away with it, or that his father was right. "I've been training for months now. When do I finally get to go out on a hunt with the rest of you?"
"When you won't slow us down or scare away the game."
Joti went to bed. The next day, he jogged out with a grim resignation. He couldn't fight Tug and Issi. He certainly couldn't fight Kajo. All he could do was put in his own miles.
The next week, Tug and Issi missed a full day of training, nowhere to be seen. The day after, they showed up with bruised, puffy faces, their lips split and their eyes swollen. When they ran that morning, rather than ranking first and second, they came in at the very bottom of the pack. They never won another contest again.
Justice had been meted out by Kajo after all, but Joti wasn't so sure he liked the lesson. Meanwhile, the wait to be sent on a hunt felt like forever. Yet if he could have seen what was coming, and had the choice to step back through time as easily as he loped along the stream bed, he would have stayed a Half Soldier forever: green fields and hot days, the anticipation of a dream on its way, and his pains, for all their sharpness, nothing but shadows of the heartache ahead.
~
Fall came, cold winds whistling over the prairie, shepherding dark gray clouds full of stinging rain. The tribe picked up their tents and traveled southwest, closer to the coast where the snow rarely made itself seen. There was a strange stillness to the air, which smelled smoky even when Joti's runs took him miles away from the village.
The winter was mild, which was fortunate—as the year turned over, the Gru raids started earlier than ever, seeking captives for their mills, workshops, and fields. The Yatto picked up while the rains were still falling to make their way back to the stream-fed prairies of the northeast. The sky seemed darker than in years past. The winter lingered, worsening just as it should have given way to spring.
As they traveled, Joti's dad took him ranging to learn the landmarks, burial grounds, lookouts, and waterways of their migrational route. On the way back from a look at a pond, the sun looked like a poked eye, red and angry, muddled behind the haze.
Joti stopped to stare. "It looks like the Nine-Year Winter."
"It does." His father glanced at him, then at the sun, then sharply back at Joti. "Where did you hear about the Nine-Year Winter?"
"I don't know. Probably from a story someone told around a fire."
Odobo swept back his hair, frowning. Back at the encampment, Joti wandered behind the Ridik tents to get in some extra time with his staff. It was new, six inches longer than his first, which he'd outgrown, and he was still getting used to its balance. He was still jabbing and swinging when his dad returned and told him to come along.
"Tell me we're not going to another pond," Joti moaned. "If I get bitten by one more nub-fly, I'm going to turn into one."
Odobo said nothing. He took Joti outside the camp and into a copse of tomb trees that hung tight to their leaves even into death, like decadent Alliance kings who stuffed their mausoleums with their riches. It was hours until nightfall, but between the screen of leaves and the weakness of the sun, the two of them walked in full twilight.
A single tent stood ahead. Those in the camp were brightly dyed with family colors, but this one was charcoal gray. Odobo stopped outside the entrance, removed his shoes, and kneeled. He glared at Joti until he did the same.
Inside, an old man grunted with laughter. "Odobo. What's spooked you today?"
Odobo swept aside the flap and gestured Joti inside. Dried snakes hung from ceiling hooks. Shelves of greasy glass bottles held herbs, dirt, and bugs of all colors and kinds. The air smelled of the three small copper pots heating on the coal-fired carry-stove at the side of the tent.
A tall, time-weathered man seemed to step out from the shadows themselves, sending Joti stumbling back toward the flap. The old man smiled, a broken fang protruding from his lower lip.
Odobo cast a critical eye on the wyvern stinger dangling two feet in front of his face. "Who says I'm spooked?"
The old man—Grint, the Yatto tribe's only eyelock—laughed again. "What did you call what I do? 'Chatting with mushrooms and singing to the bees'? Yet when the light
fades to nothing, and you see the eyes staring back from the darkness, everyone becomes a believer."
"Are you going to perform my akaba? Or spend all day complaining that no one wants you to perform them?"
Grint's bright eyes shifted to Joti. "Boy. Hold out your hand."
Joti extended his right hand. Grint whisked the first two fingers of his right hand across Joti's palm. With his left, the old man swept a shallow copper bowl from his pocket and held it under Joti's hand. Blood dribbled from Joti's palm into the bowl—Grint had cut him with something hidden in his hand.
Joti clenched his teeth against the sudden pain. Blood trickled into the copper bowl with a metallic patter. When the bottom of the vessel was full, the old man smeared a rancid-smelling paste over Joti's cut, sealing it instantly.
Grint moved to the shelves. Gnarled hands moving as swiftly as Joti's staff during a sparring match, he sprinkled in pinches of green dust, orange beetles, and a single white feather. Finished, he walked bowleggedly to the carry-stove and set the copper bowl on its top.
Multi-hued fire whooshed upward, licking the canvas ceiling. Odobo moved closer, pulling Joti with him. The fire shrank until it was eight inches high, hue shifting from yellow to green to purple, then repeating. Grint stared into it with a mixture of hunger and fear. As the old man began to whisper to himself, Joti thought he could see silhouettes moving within the flames, lunging and striking at each other, most vanishing as quickly as they'd manifested.
The room brightened to full daylight, and then to a brightness as dazzling as a lightning strike; the flames burned hotter and hotter, until Joti had to turn his face to save himself from being burned.
The room dimmed. The fire shrank to the size of a hand, then a finger, then a thumbnail. It died with a whisper that almost sounded grateful to be extinguished, a last spiral of smoke climbing to the ceiling.
Grint gazed into the scorched bowl for a long minute. When he turned to face them, his eyes were as sunken as those of a corpse. "Why did you bring him here?"
Odobo tightened his shoulders. "I have this…feeling. Like we're walking out on a frozen lake and we think it's solid but the ice is about to splinter beneath our feet. Clans war with clans, tribes with tribes, families with families. We're as fractured as a broken bowl. And how can a broken bowl hold any water?"
"The boy, Odobo."
Joti's father blinked, as if he were returning to his own body. "Where others would bash things apart, he brings them together. He may be what we need."
"I see two fires," Grint said. "The first burns down from the sky. It stretches from one horizon to the next. It burns briefly, but by the time it ends, it burns the Yatto with it.
"The second fire burns up from the earth. It burns in a circle that crosses the world. It burns for years—and when it ends, this world is gone."
Odobo's mouth hung open. He clicked his teeth shut. "The first fire. When will it come?"
The old man shook his head. A tear slid down the folds of his face. "It's already here."
~
Joti held his tongue until they left the tomb tree grove. "What in the Eight Clans did he mean? How can our tribe be burned up by a fire? We can just outrun it. The same way we outrun the Gru."
"Grint's visions don't show you the future the way we're seeing the trees in front of his. When his sights are right at all, they're closer to bad dreams. While you're having one, it feels frightening, terrible, and huge—but when the dawn breaks, life goes on like always."
His father would say nothing more. That night, when Joti dreamed, it was of fiery horses galloping across the landscape, setting the trees and grass aflame with each stomp of their hooves. As the fire spread, the Yatto people gathered and ran, but when Joti turned around, they were gone, lost behind the horses and their wall of flame. He ran onward alone, the heat against his back and the cold of night against his face.
A hand shook him awake. It was dark and he could still smell the smoke. "Leave me alone. It's not time to run yet."
"Today, we don't run." There was a smile in his mother's voice. "We hunt."
He bolted from bed. His mother already had their packs prepared. She passed him a spear, the same length as his staff, its tip forged from shining dwarven steel.
Joti lifted it, a surge running up his arms. An army of questions battled in his mind, but he feared that if he asked a single one, his mom would change her mind and send him back to sleep.
By moonlight, she led him north away from the camp. The cold air tasted as sharp as a knife on Joti's tongue. Moonlight outlined the trail. When dawn broke, clearer than it had been in weeks, Hako broke into a jog. Two miles later, Joti had barely begun to sweat.
Grassland unrolled before them, freckled with patches of forest. To the southeast, the mountains of Drag Nir stood against the world.
"Why today?" Joti said.
His mother grinned. Around the camp, she often seemed impatient and harsh. Out in the wilds, she looked at home. "Because you've earned it. And because your father feared you'd stab us in our sleep if you didn't get a taste of wild blood soon."
She jogged up a hillside. At the top, she stopped and pulled Joti down. On the plains below, a herd of eight deer picked at the grass. His mother sat in a crouch, spear held beside her. She pointed to a ridge running along the left of the deer.
"I'll come up that ridge from the back side. When I'm ready, you sweep across from the right. Push them toward me."
As Joti nodded, the light seemed to flicker. He glanced over his shoulder. "Mom."
"Voice down—"
"Mom!"
He grabbed her arm. She whirled, snarling at him. Then her eyes flew wide. She grabbed her spear and shot to her feet.
To the southeast, the highest peak of Drag Nir vomited a pillar of fire toward the heavens of Uggot. Burning stars rained down from black clouds. As the stars pounded down into the blue slopes, turning them orange with fire, a roar of thunder slammed into Joti, louder than the end of the world.
8
The rum brought tears to Wit's eyes. "Madam," he said to the peasant woman, "that is a very nice dress, and it is a shame that it has been ruined."
"Well, I think if I scrubbed it and used some anare soap…"
"I fear that it has been ruined." Wit choked down another swig. "If some other person was responsible for the damage to your dress, they would have to pay you for it, you know." The third sip was somewhat better. "You could seek the power of the Order to be made whole."
"Well, I would like that." She looked at Wit nervously.
Wit nodded. "All seeking Our Power must answer three questions. If the answers are incorrect, you will be under an obligation to the Order, the nature of which I shall determine. Are you prepared to answer the questions, and render your obligation should you fail to answer them?"
"Well, I suppose so."
Wit nodded. "Why do you seek Our Power?"
"To be made whole."
"Were you injured?"
"I suppose I was."
"What was the cause of your injury?"
"That man was."
"We have before us a Controversy. Both sides must be heard. Tell me, madam, how did this damage come to happen to your dress?"
"Well, when he first come into the village and said what he had done, one of the farmers hit him about the face some, cutting his lip, and then when we saw that there was nothing to be done, I begged him to tell us where my babe was, I grabbed him and some of his blood got on my dress, although I didn't notice at the time."
Wit nodded, and turned to the man. "Have you anything to add?"
"What in hell are you playing at wizard?"
"Did you know that you were bleeding when this woman approached you?"
"Of course I knew I was bleeding."
"Did you do anything to prevent your blood from getting on her dress?"
"Why would I care about her dress?"
"As I understand it, the fault lies ninety percent with you,"
Wit said to the woman. "If you knew he was bleeding, you really should have known not to come in contact with him. But in light of the fact that he did nothing to avoid bleeding on you, I don't think he is entirely blameless. Do either of you want to seek Our Powers as to Fault?"
"What in the names of the gods, my child is about to be devoured and you blame me for the blood on my dress, may your entire Order—"
"Do either of you want to seek Our Power as to fault?"
Neither the woman nor the bandit spoke. "Good. Now, we shall turn our attention to damage. Please, how much did you pay for that dress?"
"Bought it from a trader for two chickens."
"I see. And what would you consider the value in gold of those chickens?"
"I am not sure. One of them was very fine and laid quite large eggs…half a gold piece, perhaps?"
"That seems like a very good deal, I believe that I have seen a dress in the capital just like it for a whole gold coin. And how long ago was this dress/chicken transaction conducted?"
"Four years? Three years?"
"I see. When one factors in the exchange rate, the dress' depreciation in value over time, and the fact that one of the three chickens it was acquired for laid especially large eggs, I am inclined to give it a present day value of a quarter of a piece of gold. Do either of you wish to seek our power in this regard?"
They looked at Wit blankly.
"Excellent. Meaning that you have been damaged in the amount of approximately one tenth of a gold piece." Wit took another sip of rum. "Do you have any gold?" he asked the bandit.
"I haven't got any with me…."
"Well, I am inclined to think that one tenth of a gold piece is going to come to…five hours?" Wit deliberately aimed low. "Now, you may seek Our Power in this regard, but if we find that it is more than five hours, you shall be Bound to this woman for whatever the power says you will be Bound for and then Bound to the Order for five more years on the conclusion of that time. Do you wish to seek Our Power?"
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