He counted them that way, in ones. One step, one step, one step. It kept him going, to think of the task in its smallest pieces. One step, one step. When the call was made to return to a standard march, Tau was blowing hard, the slash across his face burned, and his broken wrist throbbed, but he hadn’t stopped, and the run had taken them to their destination, with Scale Jayyed at the front of the column.
It was Jayyed who called the halt. Tau was beside him. Uduak and Hadith, too, stuck to the sword master’s hip like twin scabbards.
Jayyed glowered at his scale, but Tau could see through that. Their umqondisi couldn’t hide his pride.
“Welcome to the Southern Ihashe Isikolo,” he said.
The military academy stood behind him. It was a soot-colored monolith that dwarfed the keep in Kerem. The isikolo was larger than the Onai’s keep, pentagonal instead of circular, and its walls were higher. It was located a thousand strides from the ocean, built on the same ground where Champion Tsiory made his first advance camp, after he’d pushed the hedeni from the beach, or so the story went. Given its walls, twice as thick as keep Kerem, the heavy bronze gates, and the watchmen posted at every corner, the isikolo seemed impregnable. It would take a massive force to siege and take it.
“Inside,” shouted Jayyed.
Inside the walls, the isikolo was filled with uniform one-story buildings. Tau thought he could identify the ones that were barracks, but that was it. Jayyed handed them off to a Proven attendant who would help the initiates learn their way around the compound.
“Name is Limbani,” the sour-faced guide, missing an arm and eye, told Scale Jayyed. “I’ll show you around, get you fed and bunked.”
Other Proven were doing the same, acting as guides and introducing themselves to the incoming scales. Limbani began walking, prompting Tau and the others to follow.
“Over there, mess hall,” he told his group, pointing with his one arm to the hundred-stride-long building near the center of the isikolo. “That’s the armory; there is the umqondisi quarter; that way leads to the training grounds; latrines are there, there, and there. And, most important, over there is the infirmary.” Limbani smirked. “You’ll become well acquainted with the infirmary.”
A few men muttered at that.
“On to your barracks. We’ll settle you in, nice and comfortable, neh?”
Scale Jayyed’s barracks, a long adobe hut with thin straw pallets running its length, was large enough for the fifty-four men in the scale. Uduak was first to claim a spot and took the cot closest to the door. After that, there was some jockeying for position, though Tau wasn’t sure what made one spot better than another. He wound up with a cot near the rear of the building, next to a tall but slim-built man with a hacking cough that didn’t stop.
“Tau,” Tau said to him.
The man coughed, turned his back, and placed his pack on his cot. “Chinedu,” he said.
“It’s mealtime,” Limbani told the initiates. “Better to be early rather’n late.”
“Gonna… go… eat,” coughed out Chinedu, and he left.
Most of the scale did likewise. Tau stowed his gear under the knee-high cot and sat on the bed that had become his.
He thought of his father, of Aren Solarin, who had deserved so much more from life than it had given. He lay back. Perhaps Aren had slept in this same spot, so many cycles ago, dreaming of what his life would bring.
Tau tried to imagine his own life as it might have been. He couldn’t. Only days had passed, and somehow, he was too far gone to ever go back.
He closed his eyes. Time to rest. In the morning he’d begin day one of his cycle of training. One cycle to learn how to kill men like the Indlovu, to become a military man, to take vengeance.
Tau frowned and poked at the raw skin on his face. This wasn’t the life he wanted. He pictured Zuri, conjuring up a happy memory, trying to determine if there was a chance at something more as his fingernail caught and pulled on the edge of his wound.
He hissed at the pain and a drop of blood slid across his cheek and into the corner of his eye. He wiped away the red tear and the memory. One cycle.
TRAINING
He was up first. The sun hadn’t risen, but the barracks were hot as a furnace and stunk of sweat. Tau, dressed in the same clothes he’d worn the day before, gathered his gear and made his way to the mess hall.
There were a few other initiates and a couple of umqondisi there, eating at one of the hundred trestle tables in the huge space. The food sat in large heated pots along the north and south sides of the building. Tau ladled the pot’s steaming mush into an earthenware bowl and found a seat.
He couldn’t tell what he ate, but it was better than anything he’d had to eat back home, and it boggled his mind to think he could finish his bowl, walk back to one of the pots, and refill. To prove it was possible, he did just that.
After eating, Tau left the mess hall to explore. It was getting busier. Drudge went about the work that kept the academy running, and he saw several umqondisi walking toward the initiate barracks.
“Tau!” a voice called. It was Jayyed. “If you’re already up, follow me to the training grounds. Anan, my aqondise, is gathering the others.”
Tau fell into step with Jayyed’s long strides, walking fast to keep up with the much taller man. They were headed for gates on the opposite side of the isikolo.
“You’ve eaten? Good,” Jayyed said.
Two guards opened the bronze gates. Once through, Tau got his first look at the isikolo’s main training grounds.
For a thousand strides in each direction, the grasslands had been cleared and the ground was an enormous fighting circle, surfaced with packed clay. Already, several scales were at work, doing warm-up exercises, sword forms, or sparring. Tau marveled at the scope of the training grounds, imagining what it would look like when the majority of the initiates were on it at the same time.
Marching over to Tau and Jayyed were Aqondise Anan and the just-woken, disheveled men of their scale.
“Form lines,” shouted Anan.
Tau ran over and everyone fell to order. Jayyed faced them.
“You’ve already met Aqondise Anan,” he said. “He will help me make men of you.” Someone sniggered and Jayyed rounded on the man. “Perhaps, in your little farming village, you were special. A talent among the Lessers there, neh? You could hold a sword well enough and batter most men with it? Now you’ve gone through the trials and I’ve selected you. It’s confirmation. Isn’t it? You must be special. A real warrior.”
Jayyed had their attention and, when he drew his sword, their curiosity as well. The weapon he held wasn’t sharpened bronze or even a dulled practice sword. In his hand was a sword made of wood.
Jayyed waved Uduak forward. Walking over, Uduak eyed him. He indicated that Uduak should draw his blade. Uduak did so, his bronze practice sword reflecting sunlight. Jayyed attacked.
“I have been an Ihashe warrior; an umqondisi for the isikolo; an inkokeli, leading scales against the hedeni on the front lines of our war; and an adviser to the greatest military power in the known world—the Omehi Guardian Council.”
Jayyed spun past Uduak’s defense and cracked him across the temple, sending the larger man to his knees. Uduak, a look of surprise on his face, stumbled back to his feet.