by Evan Winter
Part of him, however, wished that Jabari hadn’t insisted on coming. The other part hadn’t been able to order Jabari to remain in the camp. Tau’s friend had made so many strides over the days or, rather, nights, and Tau didn’t want to separate Jabari from the rest of the unit. He didn’t want Jabari to feel … less than.
He would watch him, though. Jabari’s recovery was nothing short of miraculous, and even though he was still stiff, the Petty Noble was mobile and had his sword on his hip wherever he went.
“I’m really meant to just throw this rope up onto the rampart and hope the hook catches?” Themba whispered.
“It worked for the Indlovu when they attacked the Guardian Keep,” Tau said.
“If memory serves, there were a few more of them then than us now.”
“We’re plenty,” Uduak said, his rope and hook in hand.
“Won’t they just cut the ropes and we’ll fall?” Themba asked.
“It’s can’t be more than twelve strides high, coward,” said Auset, “and they won’t get all of us.”
“I know exactly who they should get,” Themba muttered.
“Enough,” said Tau. “On Kellan’s cue.”
They waited a quarter span or so in the dark before the cue came, and even on the far side of the keep, they could hear Kellan’s voice, deepened and augmented by Thandi’s enraging.
“Umbusi!” he bellowed. “Your queen demands these gates be opened.”
As expected, the Ihagu above turned their backs on the area they were meant to be watching, and Tau knew they’d be staring across the keep in the direction of Kellan’s voice, even though they had no chance of seeing him or anyone else beyond and below the keep’s main gates.
“Throw ropes,” Tau said to his fighters, and they did.
Everyone’s hooks caught and Tau began to scramble up the wall with the rest.
“Hear that?” he heard a voice ask.
Tau was three steps from the top of the wall and looked up to see a helmeted head pop out and over the rampart.
“Cek!” he heard the man squeal before calling to the other Ihagu. “They’re climbing the walls! They’ve got ropes with hooks.”
Pulling himself up faster, Tau watched the rampart closely. He had no intention of losing fingers to an overzealous guard.
“Here! They’re over here!” the same voice called as the same head popped back out over the wall.
The Ihagu had a sword in his hand this time and swung it at the nearest rope.
“No! No! Don’t you—” Themba said as his rope was cut clear, dropping him back to the ground with a thud. “Nceku!”
Tau hauled himself over the rampart and onto the wall. Yaw, ever a quick one, was already there, and they were joined by Auset, Ramia, and a grumbling Uduak. The thinking was that they’d take the ramparts, secure them, and then help Jabari scale them.
“Put down your swords and no one will be hurt,” Tau said to the Ihagu guarding the ramparts. “Your umbusi is not following a lawful command from her queen.”
“Ahhhhhhh!” screamed the Ihagu who had cut Themba’s rope as he ran at Yaw. He swung at Yaw hard enough to kill him, but Yaw stepped out of range and let the man spin himself in a circle so he could kick him in the ass and send him crashing to the rampart’s floor.
The other Ihagu—there were actually nine others—drew their blades.
“There’s no need for bloodshed,” Tau said, trying again.
“We put these down, you kill us,” said one of the Ihagu.
“No, that’s not true.”
“It is,” he said. “We have to fight for our umbusi. You’re a Lesser, even if you dress like that. You know it’s true. We put down our swords and abandon our duty and you and your queen will kill us for failing our Noble.”
“We’re not here to kill—”
One of the smaller Ihagu ran forward, hoping to surprise them. Two others, understanding the intent of the first, came with him. Yaw cracked the small one in the temple and he went down. Auset cut the other from shoulder to elbow with one dirk and was about to stab him with the other.
“Auset!” Tau called, and she turned her attack, slamming the guard in the gut with the flat of her blade and doubling him over.
The last man skidded to a stop and stared at Ramia.
“You … you’re a woman,” he said.
Ramia, dirks in hand, seemed to weigh the assertion. “Yes,” she said finally, “a woman.”
“What’s going on up there?” shouted Themba.
Tau leaned over the wall and saw that Themba was halfway up and climbing Auset’s rope.
“We’re talking,” Tau said.
“It sounds like fighting,” Themba said.
“Nothing happening up here could be called fighting, fool,” Auset said.
Tau looked past Themba and to Jabari. The Petty Noble had on Ihashe grays a size too large for him and a hooded cloak with the hood up. The oversized grays helped him move without the fabric tugging at his burns, and the hooded cloak was to hide his face.
“We’re almost done, Jabari,” Tau called, thinking he could see him nod, though in the dark it was too hard to be sure.
By then, Themba had made it up and Tau turned back to the Ihagu. “We’re not here to kill you.”
“Why are you here?” the same Ihagu as before said.
“There are traitors in Palm City. We need to stop them. We need Ihagu and Ihashe to help us take the city back.”
“So, we’ll die there instead of here. That’s it?”
Tau made to speak and found he didn’t have much to say.
“What happens if I say I don’t want to fight for a city I’ve never seen?” the Ihagu asked.
Auset was moving toward the man.
“Hold, Auset,” Tau said. “They’ll put down their swords.”
The Ihagu gripped his blade more tightly. “Didn’t say I would.”
“If you don’t, you die tonight,” Tau told him.
The man locked eyes with Tau, searching for something. He must have found it because he lowered his eyes, dropped his sword, and gestured for the others to do the same.
“You know, the umbusi was wrong,” he said, continuing to avoid Tau’s gaze. “She called you a Drudge. You’re not, though.” He jerked his thumb toward the part of the keep where the Nobles slept. “You’ve more in common with them.”
The rest was easy. They helped Jabari up the wall, moving him slowly. They marched the Ihagu they’d disarmed down the ramparts and through the keep, opening the main gates for Kellan, Thandi, Nyah, the queen, and as many soldiers as the keep could hold.
Then they went to the umbusi’s reception hall, Tau’s seven, Kellan, Thandi, Nyah, and the queen. They found the umbusi there, on a chair on a dais.
“You denied us,” Tsiora said, and to the umbusi’s credit, she didn’t wither beneath the queen’s stare.
“You’re not my queen,” the umbusi said. “I accept no queen with gifts set to curse us and carry us down the path toward destruction.”
“Is this the message Odili is sending to turn you against us now?”
“Don’t change the topic,” the umbusi asked. “Is it true? Are you gifted?”
“All true queens of the Omehi are gifted.”
The umbusi laughed. “And, queen with gifts, is there any other title to which you lay claim?”
It was a silly game, Tau thought. A trap made of words among people for whom words held more value than deeds.
Tsiora lifted her chin. “We are a Dragon Queen,” she said.
“That’s all you needed to say,” the umbusi told her as three full-blooded Indlovu burst into the room through a door just behind the umbusi’s dais.
Shouting, the three men ran for the queen, swords out and ready. Without hesitation, Auset and Ramia moved to protect Tsiora.
“Char and ashes!” cursed Themba, reaching for his sword.
Yaw, Uduak, and Kellan were too far back to help.
“Out
of the way, Goddess damn you!” It was Nyah. She was standing next to Thandi, and both women had their hands up and aimed, ready to fire off waves of enervating energy, but Tau was in the way, Jabari too, and the biggest full-blood, holding a shield and wearing armor, had come within striking distance.
The Noble slashed down at Tau with a sword so thick Tau wasn’t sure he’d have been able to lift it, and as the blade cut a bright path for his skull, he flowed out and away, drawing his strong-side sword from its scabbard and across the man’s armored chest. A season ago, a bronze blade would have met bronze plates and neither would have yielded, but Tau’s sword was made of dragon scale and it split the Noble’s leather armor, shrieking as it carved through the bronze beneath.
Clutching at his chest, the Indlovu wheeled back and glanced down at a hand already slick with blood. He grimaced, the pain of the cut evident, and intending to swing again, he brought his blade up. Intent was as far as he got.
Tau drew his weak-side sword and punched it into the man’s stomach. The dragon scale missed the man’s armored plates and was indifferent to the leather, meat, and muscle in its path. It went through the Noble like a shiver and he was dead before he could fall.
Tau spun to deal with the other two and bore witness to a miracle.
Jabari, his hood fallen back, revealing the mass of ruined skin upon his scalp and neck, was entangled with one of the Indlovu. Tau took a step to help and saw the Indlovu drop to his knees, his throat cut from shoulder to shoulder. The last full-blood still alive was yelling something, spittle flying from his mouth as he flew at Jabari.
Jabari pushed off the man he’d killed and bared teeth at the Indlovu coming to finish him, and they crossed blades.
“Out of the way!” shouted Nyah, but Tau heard it as a whisper. His attention, the whole of it, was on the fight.
The Indlovu’s superior strength was apparent. Jabari had blocked correctly, but his blade was bashed aside. The full-blood, true to his training, carried his blocked attack through its natural length, then reversed his sword’s direction, swinging it back for Jabari’s core. Jabari reacted as he would have in the mists. He turned sideways, giving less of a target to his opponent, and the sword passed him by, a fingerspan from giving his insides a taste of open air. He was slower in Uhmlaba, and with each movement he scrunched up his bandaged face, showing his teeth beneath seared-away lips.
Tau thought it was a snarl or Jabari showing bloodlust. He realized it was Jabari fighting against agony, and he went to put an end to the match. The Indlovu saw Tau coming, and though he couldn’t really manage it, he tried to keep Tau and Jabari between himself and Nyah and Thandi, who were ready to enervate him.
Jabari saw Tau coming too and waved him off.
“I’ll finish it,” Tau said.
Jabari shook his head.
“I’ll finish it,” Tau said again.
Jabari, with his free hand, thumped his chest with an open palm. Each hit hurt. Tau could see it, and he could see that Jabari didn’t care. His friend was telling him to stay back. His friend was telling him that he would do this thing himself.
“Champion, this is no game,” Nyah said.
“Does anyone look like they’re playing, Vizier?” Tau asked, sheathing his swords.
The full-blood’s eyes darted from Tau to Nyah to Jabari, and unwilling to test the good fortune keeping his odds fair, he attacked with an overhead swing. The swing was ungainly, impatient. It left him open. He couldn’t have thought it mattered. He was fighting a Petty Noble so badly burned it was a wonder Jabari could stand. The Indlovu’s assumption, blind to the facts facing him, was a fatal mistake.
Jabari was not just standing; he was fighting. That alone should have told the Indlovu that he was dealing with something he didn’t understand, but it was already too late.
Moving like a creature held up by wires, Jabari jerked to the side of the Indlovu’s killing blow and stepped forward, putting himself beside the full-blood. The Indlovu jerked his head, striving to keep his opponent in sight, and had just enough time to look into Jabari’s bloodshot eyes before the Petty Noble’s sword knifed into his side and gutted him.
The fight was over and the full-blood sagged, sighing like a farmhand taking a seat at the end of a long day. His eyes fluttered, closing down, and Jabari ripped his blade free, letting the man take his rest.
Tau heard sobbing. It was the umbusi. She was standing, trembling.
“My sons,” she said. “My boys.” Her face was wet.
“Traitor,” Nyah called her.
“You killed my boys!” The umbusi’s rage was impotent, but frightening in its intensity.
It didn’t mean much that Tau was no longer a child. His reaction to seeing a Noblewoman so incensed was instinctive. Lessers died when Nobles got that way.
Nyah turned to Tsiora, who’d been silent all the while.
“The punishment for treason is death,” the queen said. “No one, Lesser or Noble, stands beyond reach of this edict. No one.”
Her pronouncement made, Tsiora walked away with Auset and Ramia shadowing her.
“Tie the umbusi to the chair,” Nyah said. “Tie her to it and get everyone out of the keep.”
“Ukufa take you and everything you love, you silver-hearted wretch!” the umbusi said.
“Get everyone out … why?” Tau asked.
“We’re going to burn it,” Nyah said.
“Vizier …,” Kellan said.
“Treason means death,” Nyah said, the last word coming out breathless. “Tie her to the chair and burn this keep to the ground. Let the umbusi join her sons to find what mercy the Goddess wills. Let the story of what happened here be a warning to any who think to refuse their queen.”
The umbusi began moving and Tau readied for more violence, but she went to the closest of the slain Indlovu and knelt beside him, hands hovering over the dead man as if she feared she might disturb him. Moving around her, Themba went to the door from which her sons had come and closed it, blocking the room’s only other exit.
“I won’t help,” Tau said to Nyah as he waved Themba back. “Neither will my fighters.”
Nyah didn’t force it. “Get more soldiers in here,” she said to Thandi. “Have them carry out my orders.”
Crestfallen, Thandi nodded and left.
“Champion,” Nyah said, looking to the three dead Indlovu and the weeping umbusi, “you and your fighters have already helped.”
GIFTLESS
Tau walked into the queen’s tent and noticed that there was no fire in the pit. It made sense. The fire raging outside, destroying what little was left of the umbusi’s keep, burned hot enough.
The decision to set the keep on fire still didn’t sit well with Tau. He wasn’t foolish. He knew they couldn’t allow open rebellion from Nobles like Luapula’s umbusi. Doing so was the same as courting disaster, but the course they’d taken, after already defeating her, felt more personal than political.
“In the morning, we begin the journey back to Citadel City,” the queen said.
“Yes,” he said.
She’d changed clothes since he’d last seen her. Possibly to avoid the smoke’s smell. If so, the new clothes wouldn’t help. The stink of what they’d done clung to the skin.
“We imagine that this will be our last night of stories,” Tsiora said.
“Yes.” They’d beaten an opponent that night. They’d won. He didn’t feel victorious.
“Where were we, then?” She was distracted. Perhaps she was asking herself some of the same questions he had.
“Princess Esi,” Tau said, reminding her.
“Our sister.”
He said nothing.
“We were born together. Most can’t tell us apart. Our bodies, our spirits, they were fashioned from the same instance of the Goddess’s will, and our births are a sign, because Esi is giftless,” she said without inflection. “We were both tested by the Shadow Council, and when they believed Esi to be without gifts, she w
as tested over and over again.” There was strain in her voice. “They had to be sure, Tau. They did what needed to be done to be sure, and Esi is the Goddess’s warning that, even in the Omehia line, gifts can thin, they can fade, and they will vanish.”
Tau didn’t think he was going to like where this was going. “The Shadow Council taught you to use your gifts when you were still a girl, and that means they tested you when you were children. How many times did they send Esi to Isihogo?”
“It has fallen to us to act,” Tsiora said, ignoring the question. “We must return the Chosen to their rightful place. If we don’t do it, it’ll be too late. It’s why we wanted peace on Xidda.
“The Goddess didn’t send us here to fight the Xiddeen. She sent us here so that we could fight with them against the Cull. Tau, the Xiddeen must be convinced that if the Cull aren’t stopped, they’ll unleash Ukufa on the world, and when they do that, we all die.”
Tau searched her face, finding nothing but sincerity. To her it was true. If she failed to bring the Omehi back to Osonte, the Cull would win and the races of man would be no more. She believed it like he believed the sun would rise in the morning.
“I see,” he said, trying to have even a fraction of her faith, while wondering where women and men like him fit in.
Where did Lessers stand in a world where dragon callers, colossal warriors, and illusion-wielding tribespeople went to war against immortals? He couldn’t do it. It didn’t make sense to see things that way, given the life he’d lived.
The powerful, in Tau’s experience, kept seeing the loss of their desires as being world ending without ever once stopping to realize that for people like him, every day held that potential already. Thandi’s brother, Anya and Nkiru’s family, Oyibo, the old Drudge, and Tau’s own father, they’d attest to it, if the world hadn’t already seen them burn.
He couldn’t look at it in Tsiora’s way, and knowing that, he moved them onto safer ground. “Before we do anything else, we need to take care of Palm City and Odili, neh?”