“A mountain one, a desert one, even a city one, where they have pretend huts and longhouses and everything,” said Yaw, interrupting Hadith.
“We face Indlovu soon. In a moon cycle,” said Tau, thinking about Kellan, wondering if he’d be there and if he’d get to fight him. His thoughts turned dark, then worrisome. Tau wondered how ready he’d be to kill again. He wondered if he was good enough and didn’t like the answer that came back.
“We’ll lose,” Uduak said, breaking some self-imposed rule by speaking to Tau.
“Ihashe always lose to Indlovu. The Nobles like it that way,” said Hadith. “Reminds us where we stand.”
Yaw smiled. “It’ll be different this time.”
Hadith gave him a look. “What’s that?”
“We’re with Jayyed. He won a guardian dagger and knows how to get us good enough to give the Indlovu a real go.”
“You think?” said Hadith. “You think we’ll be anything against a scale of Nobles?”
“I’ll fight,” Uduak growled.
“Oh, I’ll fight too,” said Hadith. “Mostly ’cause we don’t have a choice. Fighting isn’t my worry. It’s the winning I’m not convinced of.”
“We’ll kill them,” Tau said.
The other men fell silent and Hadith gave him a look.
“Your mouth, Goddess’s ears,” Hadith said as the five men went into their barracks to tell the rest of their scale that it was time to fight.
BRONZE
It felt strange, holding bronze again. Tau had his practice sword in his off hand and a shield on his right, more to protect the broken wrist than anything else. It wasn’t much and the shield felt awkward, but some protection was better than none.
He stood on one of the isikolo’s several small battlefields. This one was square, extending a hundred strides in each direction, and the valley’s water-starved grass rose to midcalf, making it somewhat difficult to run.
Tau was beside Yaw and Chinedu, near the front of their scale’s formation but a row back from Uduak and Hadith. They were facing Scale Chisomo. It was a good first test, Jayyed’s fifty-four against Chisomo’s.
Chisomo, a newer umqondisi, was Jayyed’s opposite. He was much younger and already a staunch traditionalist. His training focused on forms and he placed little stock in free sparring. And while Jayyed was tough on discipline, Chisomo exalted it as an art. His men polished their bronze swords and shields every evening and spent a substantial amount of time marching around the training grounds in perfect time.
Tau didn’t know how well Scale Chisomo could fight. He was pretty sure they would work well together, though, and that wasn’t something he could say for his own scale.
Two aqondise stood between the scales, acting as skirmish judges. The rules were simple. A fighter was “alive” until a bone in his body broke, he touched the ground with anything but his feet or knees, he was rendered unconscious, or he called for the Goddess’s mercy.
The aqondise watched for cheaters and the skirmish was won when one side was eliminated. Easy, like real war; all you had to do was survive long enough to slaughter your enemy.
“Scale Jayyed, weapons up! Scale Chisomo, weapons up!” called one of the aqondise.
The sound of bronze blades being unsheathed rang out across the field. Many of the other umqondisi, aqondise, initiates, Proven, and even a few Drudge had come to see the first day of skirmishes, and Tau was near enough to the battlefield’s edge to hear men making bets. The odds were in Chisomo’s favor. Scale Jayyed was filled with brutes, but, the thinking went, brutes were no match for disciplined men.
“Fight!” the same aqondise screamed.
The two judges ran for the sidelines and the men of Scale Jayyed charged, howling like bloodthirsty predators. Chisomo’s men were not cowed. They split into three smaller but equal teams. Tau recognized the formation from his father’s war stories. It was a standard Chosen military tactic, usually executed by an entire wing, but the principles were the same even with one-tenth the men.
The outer splits of the three-pronged attack aimed to flank Scale Jayyed, while the middle split joined shields and held fast. The middle would take the brunt of the charge, and if they held against the initial assault, the outer splits would be able to pick off half of Jayyed’s men in short order. There was only one thing for it. Scale Jayyed had to smash through the middle and break free of the flanking maneuver.
Hadith saw the same thing. “Three-prong flank!” he shouted. “Break the middle!”
They crashed into their opponents and were among swords and shields. Everywhere were snarling faces, flickering blades, and the metallic tang of oiled bronze and sweat-slicked gambesons. It was nothing like the training. It was more like Daba. Chaos.
Tau saw Uduak knock a man off the Chisomo defensive line and follow him into the middle of the enemy. Hadith tried to call him back, but Uduak either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Chinedu was bludgeoning one poor initiate, whose only defense was to hold his shield high enough to avoid being brained, and Yaw had already dropped a Chisomo man and was working on his second.
A lanky Chisomo fighter faced off against Tau and poked at him with a sword, like he was trying to prod a fire to life. Tau batted the attack off target and smashed his shield into the man’s helmeted face, and he went down. Behind the felled swordsman was a tall Chisomo initiate with rheumy eyes. The initiate spared his defeated fellow a glance, snarled, came for Tau, and they crossed blades.
Tau was adjusting to the heavier weight of bronze after so long with wood, but the man he fought was having a worse time. Tau’s opponent moved like he was wading in mud. He was slow, brutally slow, and trying to work his way through the intaka form, one of the first sword-fighting sequences Tau had learned as a boy.
Tau avoided the form’s first and second sweeping attacks before crashing his sword into the man’s side. He followed that with a cuff to the nose, then plowed into rheumy eyes with his shield, knocking the initiate to the ground and taking him out of the skirmish.
Two men came at Tau next, seeming more concerned with keeping out of each other’s way than getting to him. Tau cut high, expecting a block from the first. None came, so he clubbed the man in the helmet, sending him sprawling. The second man squealed a war cry and swung. Tau caught the blow on his shield, wrist pinging with pain, then used the shield to force the man’s sword low. With the shield out of the way, Tau came overhead with his sword. The blow connected and the squealer crumpled but didn’t go down. Tau hit him again. He went down.
Tau looked up, watching for the next attacker. There was no one in front of him. He had, along with Uduak, Hadith, Yaw, and Chinedu, blasted through the Chisomo middle split. The fighting was behind them now. The left and right splits were heavily engaged with the rest of Scale Jayyed, and it was a mess. Scale Chisomo’s discipline had melted in the furnace of first contact.
“Uduak, Tau, with me to the right split,” said Hadith. “Yaw, Chinedu, help against the left.”
“Why?” asked Chinedu. “Why should I… listen to you?”
“Let’s just win,” Tau told Chinedu, and he started toward the right.
“Other right!” Hadith shouted. “The right, from when we were first facing them.”