by Matt Wallace
Quan kneels beside her and bows his head, presenting the tunic ceremonially.
“Please don’t do that,” she says, quietly. “Not for me. Please.”
Quan lifts his head in surprise. The smile on his lips remains, but it’s changed somehow. His eyes regard her oddly, as if he’s seeing something in her he had not before.
He nods, but extends his arms and continues to offer her the tunic.
Dyeawan takes it, gratefully, bowing in return as best she can. She turns back toward the planners, instinctively cradling the tunic against her chest.
“We are thirteen now,” Edger informs the rest of them.
Again, Dyeawan sees that elation and excitement in the faces of the younger planner contingent, and what she can’t deny is resentment and even anger carved into the expressions of the older members. She doesn’t understand why. Neither does she understand the significance of the number thirteen among them.
“Welcome, Slider,” Edger bids her. “Please take your place at our table. There’s a space open beside me, if it suits you.”
More seemingly benign words, and yet every time Edger speaks Dyeawan feels silent cords of discontent stretching between every planner being plucked by steel fingers.
She stares back at Edger, her own expression turning hard.
“My name is Dyeawan,” she says, for the first time since she awoke in this place.
Until this moment she’d kept that name to herself, because it was all she had that was hers. None of them knowing it somehow made it more valuable. If they didn’t know her name then they couldn’t take it away from her. Growing up and barely thriving in a place where everything could be taken from her at any time made any possession dear. She’d had her sheet of greased metal and that was enough. When she’d awakened here without it, totally vulnerable to these people, her name was all that was left.
Dyeawan realizes now that she no longer dwells in that place of no possessions and no privacy. She’s no longer Slider from the streets of the Bottoms. Here she can have whatever she wants, and be whatever she wants.
“That’s my real name,” she continues. “I’d like to be called by my real name, please.”
Even Edger falls silent at that, and in that moment she feels something pass between them akin to what she’s just experienced with Quan, that sense of Edger waking to new qualities within her of which he was previously unaware.
“Of course,” he finally says. “And our welcome to you… Dyeawan the planner.”
THE SPARROW GENERAL
SHE SHOULD BE FIRMLY MIRED in the nervy depths of fear and anticipation that precede a battle, but all Evie can think about is how she’s going to squat in this thing if the need arises.
The armor is constantly trying to drag her down. The extraneous weight isn’t quite as unbearable as how it limits her movement, however. Each step feels as though her feet are shackled together at the ankles. Evie was trained as warrior, not a soldier. She knows how to fight with and defend herself and others against hands and feet and weapons. She knows how to assess danger and plan accordingly. She’s never worn steel armor before, let alone a full suit of scaly plates complete with helm.
The armor doesn’t seem to bother Mother Manai. She’s removed the blades from the stump of her right wrist to more easily conceal the severed appendage. A steel glove with no hand inside it has been flame-melted to the gauntlet covering her forearm. The fingers of that gauntlet have also been flame-melted into a perpetual fist that hangs ready at her side.
The two of them march in tandem through the sprawling Skrain encampment, past pages and servants and other soldiers in matching armor who pay them no heed. They slipped in easily enough, blending with the dozens of sentries surrounding the camp being relieved by fresh bodies.
“Try not to be so stiff as you walk, love,” Mother Manai quietly urges her.
“How are you doing this so easily?” Evie asks through gritted teeth. “Were you Skrain before you were a Savage and you just didn’t tell me?”
Manai laughs. “No, but I was once accustomed to carrying half a dozen babes in one arm while I fended off the riffraff tryin’ to steal their food with the other. A few dozen pounds of armor is nothin’ to me.”
The Skrain encampment is massive. It’s at least four times the size of the one Evie was carted past alongside the other Savages en route to the meager tents and burned logs that passed for a Legion camp. There must be five hundred Skrain marching, feasting, sparring, and grooming themselves all around Evie and Mother Manai. They can’t even spot the edge of the adjoining collection of sticks and cloth that house half as many Savages.
Combined, the encampment is far too big to attempt the kind of silent overtaking Sirach and her night force inflicted on the Skrain attached to Evie’s former collection of Savages. There are too many soldiers and too much area to cover by sneaking tent to tent. Evie, with Sirach and Yacatek and the Elder Company’s input, has devised a different strategy for this assault.
“There it is,” Evie says.
The alarm is erected on a wheeled pedestal in the center of the Skrain camp, surrounded by several large barracks tents. It’s a horn of pure white bone that almost glows in the moonlight. The mouthpiece is little more than the size of a reed flute, but it spirals out into a six-foot cone large enough for Evie to crawl inside. With the proper application of breath, the horn’s bellow will resound throughout the entire base of operations.
Sentries posted around the camp’s perimeter carry smaller horns that are also meant to alert the others and signal to blow the main alarm, but the Sicclunan night warriors should be seeing to them one by one at this very moment.
A lone Skrain soldier has been stationed beside the encampment’s main alarm. He totes a javelin and is currently occupied with spectating a game of dragon tiles being played on the ground in the distance.
“We’ll plant ourselves here,” Mother Manai says. “Wait for it to start. It shouldn’t be long now. No reason to tax the young man premature-like.”
“You spoke of grandchildren,” Evie says to her. “How many do you have?”
“I’m not really sure anymore. A fair score more than I did when I swallowed my coin, I imagine. Damn kids don’t seem to know what else to do with their time besides breed.”
Mother Manai tries to sound lighthearted, but Evie can hear that wavering sadness and longing underneath.
“I’m sorry if my asking about it causes you pain. I didn’t mean—”
“I like thinking about ’em, remembering ’em,” Mother Manai insists. “It’s one of my favorite things.”
“What are your other favorite things?”
Manai shrugs. “Drinking, supple young men who appreciate an older woman’s experience. I’m not more’n a simple peasant with simple tastes.”
“You’re a great warrior,” Evie reminds her, and she means it.
“I’m a survivor, love. That’s all. Fightin’ just comes with the territory.”
“Can I ask… why you’re here? Why you agreed to follow me into all this?”
“I like you. You remind me of one of my daughters. And you remind me of me when I was young and fresh and new.”
“That’s it?”
“What more is there for a Savage?” Mother Manai asks, sounding almost surprised.
Evie doesn’t press the issue further. In the silence that follows, the truth of what’s about to happen begins edging between her temples, touching the previously occupied parts of her mind. The inescapable notion that a plan she’s made is moments away from causing the deaths of hundreds of people, possibly on all sides of this conflict, takes center stage for Evie. In that moment she asks herself dozens of questions all at once, with no answer for any of them. She also knows the answers don’t matter; the course it set.
The first firelights appear in the sky overhead just as the moon reaches its zenith. Evie never saw them like that when the Sicclunan night force attacked her camp; by the time she was aware of
them, tents were already ablaze. Hanging in the air as they appear to be, the volley of flaming arrows look as gentle and graceful and harmless as a flock of birds in flight. It isn’t until they begin their descent and she hears the flames crackle and whip in the wind that their violent intent takes form.
The first of the arrows strike a random tent on the other side of the camp, quickly spreading waves of flame across the brittle cloth in hungry streaks. Half a dozen more tents are on fire only moments later, and a second volley of arrows is already falling from the sky.
Evie steps forward, but Mother Manai raises an arm across Evie’s midsection, halting her.
“Wait,” Manai bids her. “Wait until all of ’em that’re near to us are fixed on the fire and runnin’ about, else we’ll have ’em on us as soon as we touch the horn.”
“But he’ll raise the alarm!” Evie insists.
“He’s starin’ at the pretty lights like the rest. His brain won’t catch up for a while yet, I promise. Just wait!”
Evie’s feet ache to rush ahead, but she halts them, trusting to the older woman’s instincts. The Skrain are all beginning to buzz around them, some standing and watching the falling fire while others run around in confusion and panic.
While Evie watches the genesis of chaos, Mother Manai keeps her eyes affixed to the soldier stationed at the warning alarm. She’s right, his first move isn’t to send a warning bellow through the horn; he’s watching the arrows descend like the rest.
Finally, some captain or another yells from a distance: “Sound the alarm! Blow the damn horn and sound the alarm!”
Mother Manai calmly approaches the Skrain soldier attending the horn as he turns to the massive spiral of polished bone. She’s more than a head shorter than him and slighter in frame by half, but from the way she carries herself you would have to explain the difference and its implications to her.
“Good evening, son!” she brightly bids him.
It’s enough to puzzle the soldier and give him pause for a just a moment. That span of time is more than enough for Mother Manai to extend the empty steel-fisted gauntlet attached to her right wrist up against the edge of his helm and tilt it back just slightly. Her other hand, already having deftly palmed a dagger, thrusts the blade into his throat. The soldier is dead before his feet even know it, and he continues to stand there, leaning slightly into Manai as his knees begin to buckle and his body wriggles beneath its armor.
Evie is on Mother Manai’s heels, drawing her sword and rushing past the death dance. She grips the tsuka with both hands and raises the sword, slashing down expertly and chopping through the horn’s mouthpiece with one swipe. In almost the same motion she gives her shoulder to the blossoming spiral of bone and pushes the entire thing, horn and pedestal both, until they tip over.
Mother Manai removes her blooded blade from the soldier’s throat and does her best to ease his body to the ground quickly and quietly. She leaves him lying there, sheathing her dagger as she steps away to join Evie. No one appears to have yet noticed what they’ve done, but the certain remedy for that is to remain beside the body and the disabled alarm.
“Move,” Mother hisses at Evie. “Don’t run, just move!”
Evie nods, lowering her sword and keeping it unsheathed at her side as they both walk away from the scene.
They begin to hear the battle cries of Savages rising above the fiery tent peaks on the far side of the camp. Evie’s heart feels as though it’s rising through her throat. The sound either means the Savages have turned on the emissaries sent to infiltrate their camp and enlist their aid, or it means they’ve raided the armory wagon and are attacking the Skrain, led by Lariat and Bam. They couldn’t risk trying to send signals back and forth between the Skrain-guarded lines before the attack. Evie trusted to the Elder Company’s reputation and influence over the rest of the dominant Savages attached to these companies of Skrain.
The soldiers stationed in the center of the encampment have begun mustering together en masse, most of them fleeing burning tents and flaming arrows. Small groups have gathered water in buckets and troughs and are attempting to extinguish as many tents as possible. The attention of the rest is being collectively pulled toward the commotion originating in the Savage Legion quarters. Evie and Mother Manai remain in the background, far enough removed from the others to flee, yet close enough to blend in with the rest of the Crachian helms and scaled armor.
“What happened to the alarm?” an angry, authoritative voice demands. “Where’re our sentries, our scouts?”
Almost as if in answer to him, a shrieking voice pierces the scattered and confused chatter among the rest of the Skrain. A lone soldier is bolting between the tents, running away from the direction of the Savage quarter. Evie glimpses him through the mass of other armored bodies. The man has lost his helm, and his face and breastplate are streaked and splattered with blood.
“The Savages are attacking the camp!” he’s screaming, frantic and obviously in shock. “They’re killing everyone! There was no warning! We had no warning!”
He continues his raving, but the same voice of authority from before shouts over him, barking orders at the mustered Skrain to form ranks. In moments they’re advancing from the center of the encampment toward the fighting outside the Savage quarter.
Evie looks to Mother Manai, who nods her head. The adrenaline is causing a deafening rush inside Evie’s ears, as if someone is banging stones together inside her head. The Savages appear to be doing what they do best, creating chaos and drawing the enemy into false skirmishes designed to whittle their numbers, weaken their position, and scatter their forces. Even if small pockets of the Skrain have managed to ascertain the situation and form limited ranks, they’ll still find themselves in the middle of a disorganized battle, outnumbered and surrounded by a world on fire.
The Savage Legion is bred to thrive in the center of chaos.
If the rest of her plan is unfolding as expected, the Sicclunan shadow warriors should be attacking the camp from the southeast while the B’ors fighters attack from the north, their ultimate goal to drive whatever number of Skrain they don’t take by complete surprise toward the center of camp, where they will be trapped between the three separate forces.
Evie and Mother Manai find a blind spot between two large tents that have remained untouched by the fires. The volleys of flaming arrows, meanwhile, have stopped falling above the encampment; now that the full assault has begun the collective forces of the Sicclunans, Savages, and B’ors don’t want arrows striking their own warriors. The two women aren’t immediately visible from either end of the small pass, and though it’s a good spot to remain unnoticed until the final phase of the battle, they have no intention of hiding.
Instead, they wait, weapons at the ready. Soon enough a trio of Skrain soldiers comes trotting between the tents, the scales of their armor bouncing and jostling loudly as they move. Evie and Mother Manai press themselves into the tents on either side of the pass, waiting. When the three soldiers move between them they strike, Evie slicing through the backs of the nearest pair of knees with her sword while Mother Manai rams the blade of her dagger between plates of armor around the first torso within reach.
The third soldier isn’t even given time to realize they’ve been attacked by what appears to be their own comrades. Evie removes a large portion of his throat with a powerful swing of her sword.
Behind her, Mother Manai has knelt over the soldier whose legs Evie disabled and is delivering the death blow with her dagger.
Evie finds she’s breathing laboriously despite the minimal exertion of the last few moments. It’s not fear. Evie finds she’s left fear somewhere far behind without realizing it. Perhaps it’s the knowledge, banished somewhere in the dungeons of her mind, that she’s given herself over fully to what was only meant to be a role she’d play until locating Brio. Ashana the retainer and bodyguard is now Evie, a Savage Legionnaire who ambushes men and women under cover, and slaughters them before they kn
ow what’s happening.
And perhaps it wouldn’t affect her so if a large part of Evie didn’t find satisfaction in this killing.
With no way to quickly and efficiently conceal the heavily armored bodies, Evie and Mother Manai leave them where they lie and calmly walk from between the two tents. The center of the camp is largely deserted, and what soldiers and pages are there are to be seen running through the space en route to join one battle or another. Evie and Mother Manai can hear fighting in every direction now, steel clashing with steel and the screams of the fighting and the dying a familiar symphony to them both.
The two of them find another spot with enough cover to shade their next ambush from the sight of any passersby. The pounding in Evie’s ears only grows louder, entire mountain ranges being pulverized to dust between her temples. They waylay half a dozen more soldiers, picking most of them off one at a time as they scatter from one fracas or another in confusion. Evie ceases to hear the voices of the dying, or focus on their eyes as the slash or thrust of her blade darkens them eternally.
It seems to her as though much more time has passed than actually has when Evie feels Mother Manai rapping the empty fist of her gauntlet against the back scales of Evie’s armor. She turns to see the older woman’s lips moving, but somehow it is several moments before she hears her words.
“Look here, love! They’re bein’ pushed back! It’s just like you said it would be!”
Mother Manai guides her to the edge of their concealment to peer out at what looks like stragglers joining the end of a heavy retreat.
The Skrain, composed largely of the soldiers Evie and Mother Manai watched form ranks and strike off to battle the Legion, are soon falling back to the center of their camp. Evie watches as they quickly arrange themselves in a skirmish line two columns deep. They still believe they’re fighting only rogue Legionnaires from the Savage quarter, and they’ve chosen to take up a position facing that side of the encampment. Evie watches several soldiers fleeing the battles raging in the north and southwest quarters of the base try to inform the others forming the line, but their warnings either aren’t being understood or heeded, or they aren’t spreading through the ranks fast enough.