by Evan Winter
The words made the day and its losses crash over Hafsa like white water. The sun had yet to set, too many had died already, and more were expected.
“I’m coming too,” the champion said, struggling to his feet.
Hafsa made a funny noise in the back of her throat, and with as much authority as she could manage, she said, “Absolutely not!”
“Now it is our turn to deny you,” the queen said to him. “No.”
Hafsa’s patient made it to his feet, though he was favoring his wounded right leg. “Am I no longer your champion?” he asked.
Hafsa blew air from her mouth, ridiculous! Then she saw the queen pause, and just as one didn’t come to lead the medicinal order of the Sah without also understanding something of people, Hafsa could see, though she knew not why it worked, that the champion had said exactly what he needed to.
“Hurry, then, Champion,” the queen said, walking away. “The traitors will not wait.”
Limping terribly, with the same look on his face that her fief’s umbusi would get before tearing the skin from the back of a Lesser who had displeased her, the champion followed the queen.
Watching him go, Hafsa Ekene placed an arm around Chibuye, worrying for the first time since becoming a priestess about how the Goddess would judge her, wondering if saving some lives made her an accomplice to the ending of others.
REINS
Tau was in so much pain he could barely think, and every step the running animal took made it feel like someone was chopping at his leg with an ax. It hurt almost as much as when the priestess had cut into him.
“I’ve found their horses in the mists,” Nyah shouted.
The vizier was on his right, riding a brown creature with Uduak seated behind her. He was holding on to her so tight she had to bat at his hands, reminding him not to break her ribs.
“Where are they?” the queen asked.
“A thousand strides ahead and a little to our left,” Nyah said.
Tau looked to his left. Kellan was on a white horse alongside him, but Tau didn’t think he could call what Okar was doing riding. Kellan had a fixed stare, was hunched over his horse grumbling to himself, and looked like he might bounce up and off the side of the beast at any moment.
“A thousand strides?” the queen shouted back. “Show them to us, Nyah. We’ll entreat Mirembe’s horse and make it seem lame. We’ll catch them.”
“You think to entreat the horse the whole time it takes for us to catch them up? Not possible,” Nyah said.
“We shall see,” the queen said.
Finally, Tau thought, watching Kellan fumble about on the horse, something the great Kellan Okar was not so great at doing. He started to smile when his horse’s feet hit the ground and the jolt sent a spasm of agony through his leg that was so powerful it threatened to make him lose control of his bowels.
“Cek!” he said.
“Put your arms around us,” the queen said over her shoulder.
“I’m fine … my queen,” Tau said, teeth clenched, face sweaty, and vision blurring.
“You are not. Put your arms around us before you fall. We cannot go faster like this.”
Tau had been holding on to the sides of the horse’s leather seat and intended to continue doing so, but the next jolting step sent such a shock through him that he cried out and snapped his arms around the queen. Her back went rod straight and Tau almost let go.
“No, hold on,” she said. “Hold tight.”
“Neh?”
“Hyah!” she shouted, speaking the beast’s language and sending them faster and faster, the speed bringing tears to Tau’s eyes and making him shiver from the wind’s chill.
They raced across the earth, covering ground at an impossible pace, and though the wonder of it didn’t stop Tau’s pain, the pain ceased being his only thought. It was like flying, and when the sun set behind them, the stormy skies revealed a million stars flashing in and out of existence behind dark clouds.
“It’s been too long,” Nyah shouted after they’d slowed their tired horses to a canter. “Ask the queen how long before her shroud falls.”
“Her shroud?” said Tau.
“She’s been in Isihogo this whole time. She’s slowing their horses for us.”
Tau held more tightly to the queen, considering what a fall at such speed would do to them. “She’s in the underworld?”
“And here,” Nyah shouted back. “She holds her mind in both places, seeing in both realms.”
Tau was behind the queen, but it still surprised him to think that she’d gone to Isihogo without him realizing. “Queen Tsiora?”
There was no answer and talking wasn’t the fastest way to get the answer he needed anyway. He followed her into the underworld, where Isihogo called to his blood, begging him to stay, to fight, but he left before the call of the mists and the monsters it hid could convince him.
“Her shroud is collapsing,” he shouted to the vizier.
“Of course it is. It shouldn’t even be possible for her to use her gifts this long,” Nyah said.
“We can hear you,” the queen said, taking a deep breath as she came out of Isihogo and sagged against him. “We’ve done all we could, and the horse we entreated will behave as if it’s injured for a quarter span at most. Care, they’re close now.”
And they were. It was dark, cloudy, and wet, but they’d been traveling east and the storm was moving in the opposite direction. Where they were it was barely raining and through the thin showers Tau could see his enemy.
“They’re looking at one of the horse’s feet,” he said. “No … wait … they’ve seen us. They’re abandoning that horse and one of them is getting onto another animal. I think … it’s Mirembe. She’s climbing onto the back of the spare horse, the one meant for the assassin.”
“You can see all that?” Nyah said, riding hard, squinting, and leaning forward over her horse’s neck. “What are you … Tau Solarin?”
“Sharp-eyed, Vizier Nyah,” he said.
“The horse they left behind was their fastest,” Queen Tsiora said. “We should take it, catch them, and force them to fight.”
“Not you, my queen,” said Nyah. “You’ve done enough and your gifts are spent.”
“Who, then?” the queen asked. “Kellan cannot ride at speed. Ihashe Uduak cannot ride at all.”
“Uduak and I will change to the fast horse,” Nyah said. “Leave Okar on his horse to follow as he’s able.”
Kellan looked both angry and ashamed at the same time. He wanted to offer more than he was able to give.
“I’ll ride with the vizier,” Tau said. He needed to see Mirembe again, after what she’d done to him in the council chambers.
“It’ll be me,” Uduak countered.
“Those are Ingonyama and a Gifted up there,” Tau said. “And the general can still do damage with a sword, even if he has to wield it off-handed. I can stop them.”
Uduak waved a hand at Tau’s thigh. “You’ve one good leg.”
“Praise the Goddess, she also gave me two hands.”
It looked like Uduak grunted, but Tau couldn’t hear it over the wind and considered the discussion closed.
“What about the Gifted?” Uduak asked, reopening it and making Tau shiver at the memory of the hold Mirembe had had on him.
“She’ll be busy,” Nyah said. “I’ll entreat her and she’ll be forced to do the same to me.”
“Champion,” the queen said too quietly for the others to hear. “The fight between Nyah and Mirembe cannot last long.”
Tau understood. Nyah and Mirembe would be fighting each other in Isihogo. They’d be pulling as much energy as they could and their shrouds would collapse quickly. The stronger one would win and the weaker one would fall prey to the demons.
“Nyah?” Tau asked as they pulled up to the horse the traitors had abandoned.
Nyah knew what he was asking. “Mirembe is stronger,” she said, dismounting the horse she’d ridden with Uduak. “Let’s go,
Champion.”
Tau took his arms from the queen’s waist and she rocked in her horse’s seat. She was exhausted and he delayed a moment to steady her.
“I won’t let their fight last,” he told her.
She nodded and he slid his way off the horse’s back and onto the ground, almost collapsing when his wounded leg took the weight. Gritting his teeth and clenching his fists around his sword hilts, he let the wave of pain smash into and over him before making his way to Nyah, who was busy climbing up on the horse Mirembe had been riding.
“Tau …,” Kellan said, worry in his voice.
“Come as fast as you can,” Tau said. “I’ll hold them until you do.”
“Let’s go!” said Nyah, offering a hand to help him climb onto the massive black horse.
Tau clasped Nyah’s wrist, steeled his features, and pulled his way onto the seat behind her.
“Hyah!” Nyah said, the horse shot off like a spear, and they were flying over the ground again. Ahead, Otobong and Mirembe were whipping their horses with wooden switches, desperate to make the animals run faster, but the distance between the pursuer and the pursued continued to shrink.
As they closed the gap, Tau looked back. The queen, Uduak, and Kellan were falling behind.
“If my fight with Mirembe lasts too long, I’ll fall to her,” Nyah said, the wind making her sound tremulous.
“That won’t happen,” Tau told her.
She said nothing more to him, speaking to the horse instead, urging it on toward the small hill ahead.
Mirembe’s party had just topped the hill and Tau could not see beyond it, but he did notice how much faster they were closing the distance.
“They’re slowing,” Tau said.
“They can’t outrun us and they know that this is their best chance,” Nyah said. “They hope to kill us before the others catch up.”
Tau rotated his wrists, loosening them for the fight. “They hope.”
FALLOW
Mirembe, Otobong, and the two Indlovu disappeared over the hill, and Tau worried that he and Nyah might be headed for an ambush. What he saw when they crested the hill was more surprising.
After a shallow dip, the sloping ground gave way to a thousand strides of farmland being worked by hundreds of Drudge with nothing but the moon’s light by which to see. Nyah pulled their horse to a stop at the crop field’s edge, and Tau winced as pain flared along his leg, locking his thigh in a spasm of cramps.
“I’ll keep Mirembe out of the fight as long as I can,” Nyah said.
Tau nodded, and with his leg still locked up, he heaved himself off the animal’s back and onto the ground. He was not in good fighting shape. “The people, they can help.”
“What people?” Nyah asked.
All around Tau were leafy stalks topped with rust-colored clusters of grain. The millet was arranged in neat rows taller than he was and they stretched off as far as he could see. The Drudge among them were still, heads down, as if they too had been planted in place.
Tau drew his swords. Without the extra height from the horse’s back, he’d already lost sight of the Nobles, and they could be coming for him.
Not five strides away and closest to him was one of the Drudge. The man was old, his face lined, hair in knots, and skin peeling from too many days in the sun. He was wearing rags and holding a wooden crate, heavy with the grains he’d collected, clutched to his chest.
He was not looking down. He was staring, his gaze bouncing from Tau’s scarred face to his red-and-black armor to his twin dragon-scale swords.
“Ukufa?” he asked in a whisper.
“Where are they?”
Still staring, the Drudge lifted a hand and pointed a bent and knobby finger at the packed stalks and leaves just to Tau’s right. Tau turned his head, peering into the dark, and as he looked, the clouds parted just enough for the moonlight to glint off the bronze gripped in the hands of the two Indlovu hiding there.
“I see you,” he said, and they charged him.
The old Drudge was in their way and Otobong’s soldiers would cut him down first. To stop them, Tau hobbled to the Drudge as fast as he could, his right leg in agony every time he put weight on it. The first Indlovu swung his sword at the old man.
It was reckless, stupid, but Tau threw himself across the last two strides and into the Drudge, knocking the old man clear of the swing and narrowly avoiding losing his own head. They went down in a heap, Tau on the bottom, screaming. He’d landed on his right thigh and his vision pulsed with fat circles of red as the pain from his leg shot through him.
“Kill them!” shouted the slower of the two Indlovu, and the Noble standing over them was happy to oblige.
He sent a thrust for Tau’s chest, and, unable to bring his own swords to bear, Tau rolled, dragging the Drudge with him. Instead of flesh, the Greater Noble’s blade struck soil, kicking up a spray of dirt, and Tau, certain he couldn’t get to his feet before hard bronze opened him up, dropped one of his weapons, scooped up a handful of dirt, and flung it at the man’s face.
The Indlovu brought his sword up to deflect the dirt but still ended up taking most of it in the mouth.
Retrieving his sword, Tau half scrambled, half limped to his feet, turning in time to see the Indlovu spit out a thick gob of saliva-soaked soil. The slower Noble, having made it into striking range and hoping to catch Tau off guard, took a swing at him. Tau saw the attack, blocked it, and spun for the Noble covered in dirt, aiming to skewer that one with his other blade.
He didn’t make it. His leg gave out and he had to hop on the good one to avoid tumbling to the ground.
“Cek!” he cursed as the soil-stained Indlovu came for him.
Tau parried, countered, and drew first blood with a vicious cut that ran the length of the Indlovu’s sword arm. Yelping, the Greater Noble jumped back and then the second Indlovu was on him.
Hobbling and hopping, Tau whirled his blades at the second soldier’s head, shoulder, hip, and leg, wilting the much larger man beneath the barrage.
“Help me!” the Indlovu shouted to the soil-stained Greater Noble, who responded by coming for Tau’s back.
Tau spun on his left leg, away from the man he was facing, and crossed swords with the Indlovu coming for him. He cut him once, twice, and as he’d done a hundred thousand times in the mists when demons came at him from every side, Tau thrust the sword in his left hand forward, a feint, reversed his grip so the point faced behind him, and threw his arm back.
The black blade burned through the air until it met leather, flesh, the edge of bone, and finally, the softer stuff that tethers the souls of men. It plunged deep into the core of the Indlovu behind him, and the sword was almost pulled from Tau’s grip when the man lurched, pawing at the thing that had killed him.
Holding his weapon tight, Tau glanced over his shoulder and saw the stabbed man slice his fingers to ribbons as they danced drunkenly along the edges of the dragon scale. The spark in the Indlovu’s eyes dimmed, his legs gave out, and then he slipped off the weapon’s point, onto the rare, rich soil of the peninsula’s grain fields.
The remaining Indlovu, his face spattered with dirt, called to the fallen man with a tenderness that had no place on fields of blood. He spoke the man’s name, invoking it like a prayer, but if that was what it was, it went unanswered.
“I’ll leave your corpse here to rot!” the soil-stained Indlovu shouted, his muscles beginning to warp and multiply as the beginnings of the enraging took hold.
“Cek!” Tau cursed again, noticing Mirembe ten strides behind the Indlovu, her hands up and aimed at the transforming man. Otobong was beside her, holding his sword low in his off hand, his only hand.
“I’ll shit in your dead mouth, Lesser!” the Greater Noble said, his voice so deep the words were barely intelligible.
“Tau!” It was Nyah from behind him. “You have to be quick,” she said, her eyes losing focus on the world as she sent her spirit to Isihogo.
Mirembe stiffene
d immediately. “Kudliwe!”
The effects of the enraging slowed, halted, then began to work in reverse, and Tau heard the Greater Noble’s bones creak and pop as he was returned to his normal size and strength.
“Watch the Lesser,” Mirembe said through tight lips, and Otobong stepped in front of her, hefting his sword awkwardly.
Mirembe had the look of someone in the underworld. Her eyes flickered back and forth, not seeing the fields of grain around them, but something else. Then her gaze settled, locking onto something, someone. She clenched her fists and smiled, and Tau knew she’d found Nyah in the mists.
“I have you, nceku,” Mirembe hissed, making a dragging motion with her hands that seemed to cause Nyah to stagger.
“Champion, hurry!” Nyah said, and before Tau could take a step, the Indlovu attacked, aiming for his wounded leg.
Tau used both swords to block the low strike. “Coward,” he said.
“Lesser,” the Indlovu answered.
And Nyah cried out, drawing Tau’s attention. She was standing but bent over like she’d taken a blow.
“My shroud … it’s gone,” she said, eyes blank, still focused on the underworld. “They’re coming. Oh Goddess … I can hear them coming.”
Tau had to get to Mirembe, but his opponent knew it too and the Indlovu was backing up, doing just enough to keep him away from the chairwoman, and Tau couldn’t move well enough to get past the soldier in the breaths that were left to do it. He needed help and saw it coming.
The queen, riding double with Uduak, along with Kellan on his white horse, had reached the hill’s crest. They were close but not close enough. Time flowed differently in Isihogo, and Nyah would be dead before they could play a part.
Worry flooding him, Tau turned back to the fight. He couldn’t get past the Indlovu and the general before Nyah died. He wasn’t enough to stop them all. He knew it and was going to try anyway.
He raised his sword and gathered himself for a charge when he heard feet shuffling in the dirt, dozens of them, and Tau, like a cloth had been lifted from his eyes, remembered that the fields were not empty. They’d been so silent, so still and subdued, that the Drudge who’d gathered to watch the conflict seemed little more than the soil, stalks, and grains that surrounded them all. He’d paid them no mind, and the Drudge had been invisible to him. It was easy to forget that they were also Omehi.