Tau gave him no space, and after trading blows, Jengo was too far out of position to defend. Tau hit him in the shoulder and then, as Jengo hopped back in pain, he cracked him in the neck. Jengo made a strange high-pitched sound and went down. Tau moved to finish him, forcing Anan to call the match.
Face hot and heart drumming, but victorious, Tau put his hands up and yelled, turning to face the onlookers, flush with his first real isikolo win. The other men were quiet. They wouldn’t even give him the glory of this small obstacle overcome. Tau dropped his arms and sheathed his sword with force. To ash with them, he thought. He’d won with his off hand. He’d won.
Anan gave Tau a shallow nod. “Hadith, pair with Tau. Uduak, have at Yaw. Chinedu, you’ll sit out with Jengo.”
Tau grimaced and squared off against Hadith. His moment in the sun behind him and gone, without even time to wipe the sweat from his head.
“Fight!” Anan said, and he did, that day, the next, the next, and the next.
Hot mornings bled into torrid afternoons, and those spun away, becoming sweltering nights, and Tau’s entire body became one contiguous injury. Some days he woke so stiff he had to roll off his cot and onto the floor, lying there until he was loose enough to rise. But he did begin to win.
It happened slowly, and every match was still a war, but Tau began to take wins from the rest of Scale Jayyed during the regular sessions. In the early mornings, during the extra training, Tau could beat Jengo with some reliability, but none of the others. Least of all Uduak, who, Tau had to admit, he loathed having to fight.
Then, one morning, Jengo did not come to the extra morning session. He was not there the following day either. The remaining four gave Tau sour looks, as if Jengo’s leaving was his doing.
A moon cycle later, Jayyed came to see the progress. To date, he’d attended fewer than a third of the regular sessions and none of the early ones. Anan, when asked about this, told the men that it was important to break bad habits and accustom the initiates to a new life of combat. When that preliminary work was done, Jayyed would have initiates able to benefit from his focused attention. So it was a surprise to see him so soon.
“Scale ready!” Anan said. “Umqondisi present.”
Tau lined up with the others and Jayyed walked the line, looking the men up and down.
“You are my five,” he said. “You are the warriors who will be my proudest creation. You will become the Ihashe that are my legacy.” No one said a word. “I’ve told many of you the cost for greatness is time. The rest of my scale puts in time. They put in work. You put in more and you work harder. You will be better. It is the natural order and the secret path to brilliance—put in more, get out more.”
Jayyed stood at the center of the line of five men. He was in front of Tau, as if speaking only to him.
“Know you’re not owed your spot,” Jayyed said to them, said to Tau. “You can and will be replaced if you’re outperformed. However, if you maintain your place, you will train and learn as much in a single cycle at the isikolo as the Indlovu learn in three at the citadel. You are Lessers, but you’ll fight as hard as Nobles.”
Tau took a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. This was what he needed. This was everything he wanted.
“Know this as well,” Jayyed continued. “Improvement can only come through intentioned effort. Every day must be hard for you. The days without difficulty are the days you do not improve. The days you do not improve are the days the men behind you close the distance. It’s then you give your enemies hope. Hope that, when they meet you in battle, they have done enough to finish you.”
Jayyed drew his guardian dagger. Tau had not noticed him wearing it. The blade, dragon scale, was blacker than the darkest night. It looked like someone had torn away the fabric of the world and forgotten to replace it, leaving nothingness in its stead.
Jayyed held it high. “On the days you do not improve, you open yourself to the blade that will gut you, the knife that will enter your heart, and the hatchet or spear that will take your life.
“To defend against failure, every day must be hard. Every day must strengthen you. For it’s in the crucible of hard days that potential becomes power.”
Jayyed stepped closer, within arm’s length of Tau. “The wars you’ll wage aren’t decided when you fight them. They’re decided before that by the extent of your efforts and the substance of your sacrifices. They’re decided by the choices you make every single day. So ask yourself: How powerful do I choose to be?”
A spell had been cast. None dared break it. They stood like statues.
Jayyed lowered the dagger and sheathed it. “Today, we do not train within our scale. Today, we put down our wooden swords and skirmish against the others.
“Go to the barracks and tell the rest of my men. Break your fast and gather your bronze, blade and shield. You’ll fight as a unit and we’ll see how powerful you’ve chosen to be.”
On the way back to the barracks, Chinedu, in spite of his wretched cough, wouldn’t shut up. “See the… dagger, did you? Dragon scale, neh?”
Uduak, head down, and voice tree-root deep said, “We saw.”
The taciturn response didn’t satisfy Chinedu. “Got to… fight the other… scales now.”
“You’re going to drive me insane with that coughing,” said Hadith.
“To ash with… you, then,” he coughed out. “Got a problem with… my throat, haven’t I?”
“It’s to be a skirmish,” Yaw said, rubbing a sunburnt hand over his sunburnt head and flaking off dead flesh. Yaw was as light-skinned as an Omehi ever was and his coppery skin was never quite up to Xidda’s sun. He was always blotchy and peeling, an inyoka shedding its skin.
Hadith spat in the dirt and turned to Yaw. “It’s getting us ready for when we skirmish in the Crags against the Indlovu. They want us to start off against each other. Get a feel for scale on scale.”
“Don’t go… to the Crags for another moon cycle yet,” said Chinedu.
“That’s why it’s called getting someone ready, you inkumbe,” said Hadith.
Chinedu bristled but did nothing. Hadith was good with his sword; besides, he’d grown close with Uduak, who would pummel Chinedu, for his cough if nothing else.
“How does it work?” asked Tau, startling the rest.
“It speaks!” said Hadith.
“It shouldn’t,” growled Uduak.
Yaw took pity and explained. “When we go at the Indlovu, we’ll outnumber them three to one. Sometimes they have Enervators, sometimes not. The numbers don’t matter much. They always crush us. We’re meant to mimic the odds the Indlovu face in the Wrist, when they go up against the hedeni, them being so numerous and all.”
“He meant what’s today supposed to be like,” said Hadith.
“How you know that, then? What he meant, neh?” said Chinedu, perhaps coming to Yaw’s defense, but more likely looking for any opportunity to take Hadith down a peg.
Hadith ignored him and lectured Tau. “Today they’ll draw straws or pull names or some such. Our scale will be up against another scale. When we do it in the Crags, against the Indlovu, there are fighting grounds set up—”