by Evan Winter
Tau was losing them and he couldn’t afford that. “I’ve seen them before. Long before today,” he said. “It started at the isikolo. Sometimes in the shadows. Sometimes in the long grasses. Sometimes at the edges of my vision, disappearing when I turned my head. They’d put their faces on the faces of humans.”
Uduak’s breath rumbled in the back of his throat and the big man made the sign of the dragon’s span.
“They’d come to me in—”
“Daydreams,” Hadith said. “Visions brought on by overwork. You were not a healthy man at the isikolo, and because I must be honest with you, it’s hard for me to believe you’re one now. Tau, you’ve been through too much too fast…. We all have.”
The words stung.
“You know me better than that,” Tau said.
“I find you running through the keep with your sword out and you tell me you’re being chased by demons.”
“I didn’t say I was being chased. I killed it”—Tau wasn’t sure where to look—“with the horse’s help.”
For a long breath, Hadith simply stared. “Did it injure you? Do you have its blood on your blades?” Hadith said, eyeing his two swords.
Tau blinked and looked at the weapons he held. The blades were clean, bloodless. “I don’t understand…. I—I stabbed it. I—”
“Fine, we don’t have any evidence here,” Hadith said in a manner not unlike the way Aren would do after Tau had had a nightmare, “but we can go to the stables. You can show us the demon.”
“It …” Tau sought help from Uduak or Kellan and found none. He brought his gaze back to Hadith’s face, unable to meet his sword brother’s eyes. “It turned to ash,” he said. “It turned to ash and then the ashes vanished.”
Hadith ran a hand over his shaved head. “Tau …”
Tau turned away from them and slammed his blades back into their scabbards. “I know what I saw.”
“You need rest and probably a priestess.”
Tau glared at him.
“For your leg,” Hadith said, clarifying.
Tau closed his eyes. “I’m fine. I’m … I’m a little unsettled, that’s all.”
“Bleeding,” Uduak said.
“What?” Tau looked down at his leg. The leather of his uniform was damp and dark around his wound.
“Need new bandages as well as rest,” Uduak said.
“I will, when we’re back.”
Kellan cleared his throat. “Champion, we can do this. You need not come … if you’re not well.”
“He’s right,” Hadith said. “You’re trying to do too much. Keep going this way and you’ll be no use to yourself or anyone else.”
“I’m fine,” Tau said as an Ihashe walked into the archway and almost through the tip of the sword Tau had yanked out and up.
“Tau!” Hadith yelled.
Tau backed away. His sword was still up. He was having trouble lowering it. “I’m fine.”
Looking ready to wet himself, the Ihashe swallowed, the stone in his throat jerking up and down. “The vizier sent me and a few others.” He pointed in the direction of the courtyard. “The queen is ready to see the war party off.”
“Thank you, Ihashe. We’re coming,” Kellan said.
The soldier saluted and left in a hurry.
“Do this for me and go see the priestess,” Hadith said to Tau.
“No, I’m coming,” Tau said, leaving them behind and walking toward the courtyard.
He tried to walk evenly, shutting out the burning from his leg and the shake in his nerves. The demon had to be real, but the doubt he’d seen on the faces of his sword brothers, his bloodless swords, and the demonless stables had already come together and conspired to make him doubt his own mind.
He heard the footsteps of his sword brothers behind him. Still, he didn’t slow down and they didn’t try to catch up, and when he got to the courtyard, he found it full of men in fighting gear and three Gifted, if the vizier and queen weren’t counted.
The crowd turned to him, and though he didn’t feel strong, Tau straightened his back while tightening his grip on the sword he still hadn’t sheathed. He nodded to the fighters and every one of them saluted.
He walked over to the queen, who was smiling at something one of the Indlovu had said. The soldier bowed to her and left and Tau saw her smile slip. He wasn’t the only one playing at strength he no longer had. He bowed his head to her.
“Champion,” she said.
“My queen.”
“We have come to wish you well. We are in your hands.” She stepped closer, leaned in, and kissed him on the cheek.
It surprised him and he had to fight his instincts in order to hold still. He’d expected her lips to be cool, like her hands. They were not. They were warm, almost hot.
She kissed his other cheek and stepped back. “Come back to us.”
Tau saluted, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Hadith tilt his head. It was the type of movement one made when being offered food or drink. It was the type of movement that asked, “A little more, please?”
Tau was thinking about the demon. He wanted to tell the queen and worried that Hadith was right and that telling her might brand him a madman, and he could see no way that helped him or her.
Hadith, Tau thought, was usually right, and with that in mind, Tau gave him what he wanted.
“We will return with the sun, my queen,” Tau said loud enough for the courtyard to hear, “and when you see me again, the warlord will be dead.”
CHAPTER THREE
EQUAL
Lightning forked across the night sky, tearing its blue-black infinity into brighter sections that outlined the claw of men trudging up the Fist. Pausing to see if the burning in his leg might lessen, Tau watched the lightning streak and disappear, plunging the world back into darkness, wet, and mud. He was having trouble keeping up and knew the claw were going slower than they would otherwise to accommodate him.
He’d have found that funny, if he wasn’t in so much pain. Tau was born and raised in Kerem, in the southern mountain range of the peninsula, and no Kerem woman or man would deign to call the Fist a mountain. Yet, he was struggling to climb it, slowing down people who’d spent their entire lives in the flatlands.
“Like the view?” Themba asked, sliding up next to him and making a pretense of gazing out at the brush and blasted landscape he’d barely be able to see in the dark.
Not wanting to spare the energy for words, Tau grunted and marched on, the boots Jabari had given him squelching into the sucking mud.
Themba kept up easily. “Hadith wanted me to let you know the plan.”
“It’s changed from ‘kill the warlord’?”
Themba chuckled. Cynicism seemed to tickle the man. “One prong for each beach. The prongs that do not find the Xiddeen are to make for the next nearest beach as reinforcements.”
Tau offered another grunt. “Have you ever seen the beaches? Any of them?”
“Me? No,” Themba said. “Kellan has, though. He says the Fist’s peak is a few hundred strides back from the Roar and that there are paths leading down to the sand and waters.” Themba looked Tau up and down. “Two of the paths require climbing.”
“I’ll make it.”
“You won’t need to.”
“Neh?”
“Kellan will take one of the steep paths. He’s leading his prong and will have a Gifted with him. Uduak has command of the other prong. He’s got a Gifted too.”
Tau grimaced. “They’re giving me the easy way and Hadith to hold my hand?”
Themba smiled. “I’ll be there too, and as I see it, we’re the head of this dragon.”
“I don’t want soft treatment,” Tau said, hating that the words sounded like they belonged in the mouth of a coddled Noble child.
“Suit yourself, but I’d rather you don’t spoil it for those of us who don’t mind a little soft every now and then. No sense in climbing up and down cliffs in the middle of the night if we don’t have to.”
&nbs
p; Tau didn’t answer that. He wasn’t about to admit that he didn’t think himself able to do much climbing. “Let’s catch up,” he said.
Eyeing Tau’s wounded leg, Themba raised an eyebrow and pushed his lips to one side.
Having Themba judge him and find him wanting was more than Tau could take, and he shuffled past the taller man, marching as fast as he could without passing out from pain.
Themba, with his longer, healthier gait, caught up again. “Easy, Tau. You’re already champion. Not much left to prove.”
Tau, keeping his head down so Themba wouldn’t see how much pain he was in, moved his hand to indicate the soldiers around them, Ihashe and Indlovu. “It took twice the ability to get named it and it’ll take thrice that for them to believe I deserve it.”
Themba shrugged. “And their opinions of you are worth the pain, the sacrifice?”
The tone was so serious, it was hard to believe the words had come out of Themba’s mouth, and Tau lifted his head to look at his sword brother. “I don’t do anything for the opinions of others.”
Tau knew the sentiment would be hard to accept, but with no smile, no mockery, and no insincerity, Themba asked, “Why, then?”
Tau kept marching, limping. “Because the limits to which we’ve been yoked were never ours, and the stories we’ve been told about our nature, our insignificance, and our lack, they were never true.”
When Themba spoke, he did it quietly. “That’s why, then? You think we can be Noble too?”
Tau’s leg felt like it was being scourged, but he increased his pace, daring the pain to stop him. “That’s not it,” he said. “The lie isn’t that we can’t be their equals. The lie is that they were ever anything but our equals.”
Yes, if the measure of a man was height, then Nobles were taller. If the measure of a man was physical strength, then Nobles were stronger. But Tau knew who decided what needed to be measured, and they’d chosen things in which they already had an advantage. They said, “This matters more than that,” making it seem as if their edicts sprang from natural law when they were little more than self-serving choices. They wrote the rules in their favor, succeeded more often than others, and pointed to that as proof of their superiority. It was all a lie.
Meanwhile, the look on Themba’s face was making Tau feel a bit foolish. The sarcastic Ihashe was being too serious, too intense. It wasn’t like him, and, continuing to behave oddly, Themba nodded at Tau’s words.
Tau had expected a rejoinder, a quip, a demeaning grin. What came instead surprised him.
“I miss it,” said Themba.
“What?”
“On marches like this, he’d always be coughing.”
“Chinedu?”
“I miss it, you know? I miss him coughing. It’s stupid, neh?”
Tau caught Themba’s eye and shook his head. “No, it’s not.”
Neither of them said another word for the rest of the march to the Crags, and when they arrived, the claw gathered in the urban battleground before separating into their prongs.
Uduak was already with his fighters and Hadith was speaking with him. They clasped wrists, Hadith said a few more words, Uduak waved to Tau, and Tau waved back. Then Uduak ordered his men to march, and just like that, they were gone.
Kellan was also with his men, and Tau saw that the Gifted in his prong was Thandi, the one he’d first met in the tunnels beneath the Guardian Keep. She was standing near him and gazing up at Kellan as he buckled his shield to his back, perhaps to keep it out of the way when he had to climb down the cliffs leading to his assigned beach.
As Tau stood there, feeling guilty that Kellan might have to climb because he could not, Kellan saluted. Hurriedly, Tau returned the gesture.
“Goddess go with you,” Tau shouted across the distance between them.
“And you,” Kellan called back.
Tau turned to Hadith, wondering why everyone was being so strange and formal, when he recognized where they were. He was standing in the same circle of the urban battleground where he’d almost killed Kellan not so long ago. He glanced back, seeking the Greater Noble, but Kellan had turned a corner and was lost to sight.
“Didn’t think we’d be back here, especially not this soon,” Hadith said.
“Looks different,” Themba said.
“How so?”
“Smaller.”
“Doesn’t it just,” said Hadith. “Come, now, let’s go and see if we’re the ones with the lucky beach.”
“Why is it,” Themba asked, sounding more like his regular self, “that with two of three beaches bound to be empty, I still think we’ll be the ones to step in the scorpion’s nest?”
“Ihashe, we should march in silence,” said the older Gifted in their prong as she walked past Themba with her Indlovu honor guard.
“Couldn’t have gotten us the pretty one?” Themba said when she’d gone from earshot.
“What’s that?” Hadith asked, cupping his ear and looking in the Gifted’s direction. “Speak up?”
Themba did no such thing, opting to give him a look and a few muttered curses instead.
The path they took up and out of the Crags was one Tau had never taken before, and they marched for the better part of a span before one of the Gifted’s honor guard came to speak with them. He was big, a decent bit larger than Uduak, and he looked down his nose at them when he spoke.
“The beach isn’t far now. We’ll have to go in slowly and watch for scouts.”
“I’ll go ahead with Themba,” Tau said.
Themba shot Tau a look. “What? Why? Uh … Champion.”
“Because we are more than equal to the task,” Tau told him. “What’s the best way to the beach from here?”
The Indlovu explained the layout, drawing a crude map in the wet dirt.
“That can’t be right,” Tau said, having a hard time believing the man’s map and maintaining an agonizing crouch so he could see it. “You’ve drawn it as if there’s a forest of stone on the beach.”
The Indlovu seemed to want to say something other than what he did. “It is right.”
Tau stared at the lines in the dirt and then at the man. “Very well. If there are scouts, we’ll handle them. Give us a quarter span and follow.”
The Indlovu stood, saluted, and went back to stand with the Gifted. Tau prepared himself, exhaled, and straightened up too, closing his eyes and biting his lip as the spasm of agony blazed through his thigh.
“And with that leg, you want to go scouting?” Themba asked.
Tau opened his eyes. “I do.”
Themba was pouting. “Stubborn as a dung beetle in an outhouse.”
Hadith put a hand on Tau’s shoulder. “Will you try not to do anything stupid?”
“I’ll try,” Tau said, taking some pleasure in the worried look on Themba’s face.
Hadith clasped Tau’s wrist and then it was time to go.
“Please be one of the lucky beaches,” Themba said, following Tau.
“Are you often lucky?” Tau asked over his shoulder.
Themba sighed. “Since I met you? Never.”
ORDERS
They encountered no scouts, but they did find the Xiddeen. The majority of the raiding fleet had set sail, and as far as Tau could see, a line of longboats snaked out of view behind the swell and crash of the Roar’s eternal anger.
They had come in perfect time. The scouts had been recalled to board the last two ships, and all that remained of the largest invasion of Omehi land in living memory were two hundred hedeni, including their warlord.
A short run inland but still on the red clay sands of the beach, Tau and Themba hid behind one of the innumerable jagged pillars of stone that stretched for the sky like a maze of broken fingers. The pillars, white as chalk, began at the base of the Fist and extended out beyond the water’s edge.
The sight of it had stunned Themba, and his mouth still hung open. “What in the Goddess’s name?”
“It’s exactly as the Indlo
vu drew it …,” Tau said. “The Roar actually did smash this section of the Fist into a cove of spires.”
“This is no beach,” said Themba. “It’s the exposed and bleached bones of a dying peninsula.”
Tau tilted his head at his sword brother. “Neh?”
“What? I can’t be poetic too?” asked Themba. “You called it a cove of spires.”
Tau shook his head at him. “The rest of the prong will be here soon.”
“They’d better be. I don’t think we have much time before the warlord gets on his ship.”
“There’s time,” Tau said, pointing to the man in the distance, pointing to the warlord. “That’s Achak, and the person he’s speaking with is his son.”
Squinting, Themba leaned forward, as if the distance gained might help. “That’s Kana with him? You can see all that?”
“I can.”
Themba eased back. “So what if he’s speaking to his son?”
“He’s wishing him a safe journey.”
Themba eyed the rough waters. “I’m no coward, but you know, we could sit here and let them try the Roar. If we’re lucky, they’ll drown.”
“Remind me, how often are you lucky?”
Themba spat onto the red clay. “Clean thrust,” he said, conceding the point.
“If they’re wishing each other goodbye, it means Kana is boarding the next ship. His father will be on the last one.”
“They keep them apart?” Themba asked.
“Less likely to lose both that way.”
“They’d lose no one if they kept to themselves and left us alone.”
“The timing will be tight, but we should be fine,” Tau said. “Kana will set sail, and before the warlord boards the last ship, we’ll attack.”
“Hold,” Themba said, looking away from the beach and to Tau. “If the prong gets here in time, shouldn’t we try to get both father and son?”
Tau shook his head. “We let Kana sail.”
“Why?”
“It’s a much easier fight without him on the beach too.”
“Tau, most of Kana’s fighters are already aboard their ship. They won’t be able to get off fast enough to help anyway.”