The Serpent and the Crown

by Sam Puma

  As the soldiers dispersed, Orion came up and clapped Jankaro on the soldier. “You’re on watch for the first shift tonight. After that, stay awake a little while longer if you can. We need to shift our rhythms to sleep during the day and acclimate to being awake through the nights. Tomorrow when you rise, go and get something to eat at the mess hall and then come meet me at the arena for some battle training.”

  Jankaro stood on top of the wall and scanned the darkened countryside across the chasm as a gentle rain descended. The clouds obscured the moon and starlight, but every now and then he saw the glow of a night creature moving in the distance. He had been assured there would be no attack that night but he stood with his bow and arrow ready.

  After two hours passed, he saw a single glowing figure approaching on the road. It was getting close to the bridge, so he drew his bow back and prepared to fire. “Lower your bow,” came a command from Aramis, the captain of the guardsmen. “It’s one of our horses.” Jankaro lowered his bow and watched it cross the bridge without a rider. The gate opened and the horse was admitted. “He tried to stay out too late and got too close. A horse without a rider means a scout has been killed.”

  “Do you think they would send back a sick horse to make us all sick?” The words came out of Jankaro’s mouth before he knew what he was saying.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?!” Aramis whistled at the other guardsmen to stop the horse. He raced down the steps, grabbed a long spear, and herded it back out onto the bridge. He drove the spear into its side and pushed it off. “He will have a quick death when he hits the water, and his body will wash out into the ocean to feed the fish.” Aramis strode back into the castle and they closed the gate.

  Fighting Orion the next day was intense. He hobbled on his locked wooden leg so he would have both hands free to fight.

  “Most of the common Cruxai lack the coordination to work with a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other,” said Orion as he casually brushed aside Jankaro’s attacks with his shield and struck back with his sword.

  They traded blows. Jankaro struggled to keep up, while Orion dictated his views on fighting.

  “You simply block,” he said the word as Jankaro’s sword struck his shield. “And kill,” he said as his sword crashed down on Jankaro’s shield from above. “Block, kill,” Orion chanted as he rained blow after blow on Jankaro’s shield. Orion picked up the pace as Jankaro tired. One blow crashed into Jankaro’s shield so hard that it came back and hit him on his helmet. The next blow hit Jankaro’s shield so hard he fell flat on his back. He looked up and saw Orion standing above him, but he paused for a moment and stepped back. Jankaro got back up. “Take one breath,” the big man said, “then come at me. We have to train for the real battle, and it goes on all night. Get up. Kill me like a hairy Cruxai.”

  Jankaro took a breath, charged, and unleashed a flurry of attacks. This time he was more competitive. He dug into the inner resources of his body and poured out all the energy he could summon. Back and fourth they fought as their swords and shields clashed. Finally, Jankaro found an opening, and made a thrust for Orion’s chest.

  Orion simply twisted his body away and Jankaro stumbled forward. Orion kicked him in the butt and he fell in the dirt.

  “You’re going too easy on him,” said Titus. He kicked Jankaro’s foot. “Get up.”

  The moment Jankaro got to his feet, Titus swung at him. Jankaro barely blocked the blow and fell on his back again.

  “Stop falling down,” said Titus. “If you do that in battle you will be dead.”

  When Jankaro stood again, Titus swung at him. Jankaro ducked the first swing and blocked the next with his shield. He was knocked back but kept his feet. Titus kept attacking with a pace much faster than Orion. Jankaro fell to the ground several times, and every time Titus would curse at him for it. Every time he got back up, Titus’ sword was there to greet him. Eventually he hit the ground and was stunned for a moment.

  “Get up. Now!” Titus barked as Jankaro got on one knee.

  “Leave that rag alone,” said Rafael to Titus as he stepped in front of Jankaro with his sword drawn. “It’s time for you to practice.”

  Rafael laid into Titus with a series of attacks, but Titus was quick to block as the brothers sparred. Jankaro watched as their swords moved so fast that they seemed to disappear as they were swung and reappear when they collided against each other.

  Orion extended his hand down and helped Jankaro to his feet. “That’s enough for now. Take the rest of the day off.”

  Jankaro had mixed feeling about it. He knew he needed more training, but the sparring had left him so exhausted that he welcomed the chance to catch a breath. He started to walk away, and before long, Orion was clashing blades with another soldier.

  Jankaro walked away from the arena. The streets were empty all around him, as Oranos had led all of the people but the fighting force to hide in the caves below the city. His burdens lifted as he noticed the fog drifting slowly all around him. The levity he felt as he got further away from the arena contrasted with the grit, sweat, strain and tension that emanated from it. He knew how strong he had become through all of his experiences with the Galdeans, but he guessed they must be so much stronger than him, through years of training and fighting the Cruxai. They had been hard years, full of loss. Jankaro could see how Jorobai and the other men of Olaya had shielded him from the truth to spare him the suffering. He had always been angry that no one would tell him how his mother died. But now he understood Jorobai’s reasons.

  He admired the stonework of the Galdeans, but the walls cut him off from the vital essence of life. He looked over at the north wall, where vines grew down from a huge wall that blended into the mountainside. He could only see the base of it through the thick fog, so he approached and gently grasped two big, broad, dark green leaves that grew from the vines. He found a few leaves that had cupped water, and he tipped them into his mouth and drank a few drops.

  He remembered his friend Chesta, the gibbon, who taught him how to drink fresh rain from leaves. When he was a boy they swung through the jungle and played catch with overripe mangoes. The game ended when one of them got his face splattered and the other pointed and laughed. With that memory fresh in his heart, he parted the leaves and saw ants and caterpillars trailing along the stems and branches. He saw a small, bright green creature crawling up the wall; it looked like a lizard, but had soft, rounded pads on its toes that stuck to the wall. He thought about picking it up and examining it, but decided to leave the little guy in peace. He saw it climb and figured it was time he had a good climb too. After all the tragedy and sorrow he had faced, he found he could still be the curious explorer he had once been.

  He reached up and grasped the thick, hardy vines, starting his ascent. One after the other, his feet left the ground. His face brushed against the moist leaves and an ant wandered across his forearm. He continued up and occasionally looked back over his shoulder to see the pyramid breaking through a layer of fog. He couldn’t see much above him, but as he climbed, he noticed different plants in the changing landscape of the wall, such as tiny pink flowers that cast a pleasing scent.

  He was high above the ground when he heard a woman’s voice from above. “Whoa… who’s there?”

  He looked up and could scarcely see the outline of a body hanging from the vines above. He climbed up next to her, and their eyes met. It was Janesa, one of Anhael’s helpers who had accompanied him on their search for the yanigo tree.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said with a smile. “What are you doing up here?”

  “I saw a creature climbing with sticky feet, and I remembered that I like to climb.” Jankaro wore a worried look as he noticed she was in a precarious position, with her hands free and only her feet touching the wall. “How do you do that?! You’re not even holding on!”

  “Oh,” she said with a shrug and looked down at herself.
Then she looked up at him and smiled, amused by his ignorance of the Galdean technology. “It’s like how you manifested that armor to defend against the Juruga’s spit. Someone wanted to climb the wall and have their hands free to do other things, so they created this harness.”

  She laced her thumbs through the straps that stretched across her shoulders. “And it is attached to this rope and pulley system. I go up like this,” she pulled on the rope two times, let go with her feet and raised herself up past his head. “And down like this,” she put her feet back on the wall, pulled back on a buckle to release some of the hold on the rope, and walked herself down to meet his eyes. “It’s great. I have my hands free to work.”

  “Is there another one? I want to climb like that.”

  “I think they want to train you to fight first, but when there is time I will show you how to use one of these.”

  “What are you doing up here?”

  “I am harvesting medicines for Anhael. You see these pink flowers here? He uses them in his herbal poultices to treat battle wounds. You remember when your foot was wounded in Dorfin? These flowers helped you to heal.”

  “You were there?! I thought we first met when we went to search for the yanigo tree.”

  “Well, you didn’t have all of your wits about you at the time. I will be there again, after they attack, to help tend to the wounded.”

  Jankaro lowered his face down to the flowers and smelled them. “I remember that smell. My foot has completely healed.”

  “Of course it has,” she said as she thrust her last handful of flowers into a pouch hanging from her side and closed it up. “Just as long as you don’t die out there, we can put you back together again.”

  Janesa noticed that his face had shifted from an expression of childlike wonder to grim thoughts of the battle to come.

  “But you didn’t come up here to think about that. Come on, follow me, I bet you will love the view from the peak.” She pulled on the rope as her feet dangled, and Jankaro watched her levitate upwards, mystified by the clever inventions of the Galdeans. All he had to do was follow the sweet scent of the pink flowers as he climbed up after her. All the while the thick, old vines held his weight without a creak or complaint.

  They reached the top of the wall and the mountain rose up steeply from there. Janesa freed herself from the harness and deftly worked her way up the steep slope, clutching at protruding rocks and shrubs as Jankaro followed.

  “I think something is wrong with me,” said Jankaro, after they had climbed for a few moments. “I feel dizzy.”

  “It must be the altitude. The air is thin up here. You’re not used to it.” Janesa stopped, turned around, and looked him over. “We’re almost to the top. You can put your hand on my shoulder if you need support.”

  He wondered what it would feel like to touch her skin, but this wasn’t the way he wanted to go about doing it. “I think I’ll be okay. Go ahead.” He beckoned her to continue.

  Janesa turned and continued the winding climb. After another fifty steps they reached the top. Jankaro was breathing heavy and still felt dizzy. “Look around,” she said. “Take it all in.”

  Jankaro looked up to see the blue sky and the late afternoon sun shining down. They were above the clouds. He saw bits and pieces of Caladon’s stone buildings peaking through the clouds below. He looked beyond the city, and far below it he could see the jungle in the distance. The vast carpet of green foliage stretched to the southern horizon, crossed here and there by winding brown rivers.

  “Olaya,” he breathed the word to himself as he tried to sense where it could be.

  To the east was a vast body of water that stretched to the horizon. He thought of his father, Jorobai, out there somewhere, searching for him.

  “Look this way, to the north,” said Janesa. “You see the sheep on the mountainside?” Jankaro watched the sheep navigate the steep mountainside, remembered the ram man from the underworld, and felt the ache of the arrowhead in his chest. He remembered the stone carving of the ram’s head that loomed behind Oranos in the meeting hall below the pyramid, and how he had felt that same ache when he saw it.

  “The spirit of the sheep is fused with the spirit of Oranos and the people of Caladon. These people believe that long ago, the people and the sheep were brothers, and looked the same. But there came a time when two groups were separated by a ravine. One group eventually became the sheep, and the other became the people of Caladon. But their spirits are still linked together.

  “You and I are orphans here. We love them and fight by their side because they welcome and protect us. And we bring them the gifts of the jungle to strengthen their cause.”

  Jankaro watched the sheep in the distance for a while, then turned to the west, from where the Cruxai would come. He looked out, but all was covered in fog. A chorus of drums resounded from the city below.

  “It’s time to go,” said Janesa, as a grave look came over her face. “Get your armor and go to the front wall. That is the call to battle stations.” The sky was turning pink and orange as the sun dipped towards the horizon.

  Jankaro raced down the wall, to his chamber to don his armor and weapons, and to the front gate. He stood with his bow and looked to the west as the last traces of daylight faded. Archers filled the wall to his left and right, and massive piles of arrows were stacked neatly in front of him and behind him. Titus paced anxiously along the wall.

  “Wait for my command to fire,” he growled as Jankaro picked up an arrow and examined it.

  The fog lifted and the clouds hung overhead, obscuring the moon and stars. A gentle rain fell. There were no torches. The king decided that there would be no civilian fighters to help with this battle, only soldiers who could depend on their night vision to fight. Jankaro saw the light blue glow emanating from the bodies to his sides, but ahead there was only darkness, except for the light blue aura of a few rams and sheep working their way down a hillside to the northwest. A moment later, off in the distance straight ahead of him, he saw the dim purple glow that he recognized immediately as the Cruxai horde approaching.

  “They come.” Titus growled the obvious through clenched teeth as the purple glow grew wider and brighter. Eventually Jankaro saw the outlines of individual bodies moving toward the bridge.

  Titus stopped pacing, picked up his bow, and nocked an arrow. “Archers take aim,” he said in a cold, calm tone. Jankaro nocked an arrow and pulled back his bowstring. “Fire away!” Titus unleashed the first arrow and the rest of the archers followed suit. Jankaro took aim and fired. Like the others he didn’t watch his arrow fly. He grabbed arrow after arrow and let them fly into the tightly packed ranks of Cruxai where it would be hard to miss.

  “Don’t stop!” Titus yelled as he continued firing arrows. “Kill as many as you can!” The Galdeans had piled fallen trees and large stones all over the bridge. It slowed down the Cruxai as they cleared it away before they could batter the gate. This gave Jankaro and the other archers more time to kill.

  The Cruxai had some archers of their own who fired arrows back up toward the wall. They didn’t possess the same level of accuracy, but some of their arrows pierced the flesh of some of the Galdean archers. Some of them were wounded and kept on; others were seriously wounded and had to retreat. A few were so grievously wounded that they fell down and lay still. Jankaro dodged a few arrows and kept right on firing as the booming sound of the Cruxai’s battering ram collided with the gate. “Kill the ones with the battering ram!” Titus commanded as his next arrow downed the first Cruxai holding the battering ram.

  Jankaro and the other archers dodged incoming arrows and fired down on the bridge. Fresh Cruxai picked up their dead, threw them over the side of the bridge and assumed their positions on the battering ram. This process kept on until they had the gate broken down.

  As the Cruxai poured through the gate, Jankaro heard Rafael shouting orders to th
e soldiers who waited behind them in the city.

  “Keep firing on the bridge!” Titus commanded. They were streaming through the front gate, and Jankaro’s arms were getting tired. He slowed down his rate of firing and aimed for the vital points of the larger Cruxai. He could see the strategy that Titus was using with the archers. As long as they kept piling up bodies on the bridge, it slowed the progress of the horde getting into the city. But a big sturdy Juruga came along and swept the whole bridge clean as he charged past the gate; the arrows raining down couldn’t stall him. Then a whole burst of Cruxai of all sorts got through the gate.

  “Don’t turn around! Keep firing on the bridge! Don’t stop!” Titus shouted commands fueled by his battle rage. His voice rang out, seemingly amplified by the ram horns on his helmet.

  Stones rumbled down on the Cruxai and steel clashed as Rafael and Orion led the rest of the soldiers in ambushes throughout the city. One thousand Galdean soldiers defended Caladon and the Cruxai were estimated to outnumber them 100 to 1. The Galdeans were better fighters but they had to resort to guerilla tactics to inflict tremendous casualties while incurring as few as possible. They gambled with their lives while gauging when to destroy the bridge and seal the bulk of the horde on the other side of the chasm.

  A rock flew up and collided with Jankaro’s arrow, breaking it. He fumbled his bow, then stooped to pick it up. He heard rumbling stones and gasping of the Cruxai on the bridge. He got back up and looked down to see the huge stones that formed the bridge falling into the chasm, followed by the bodies of dead Cruxai and those flailing their arms who were soon to be dead. He watched them plummet in stunned silence as the battle seemed to pause for a moment.