Tau stopped, shrugged, not quite sure what difference it made, but changed direction.
“C’mon, then,” Yaw told Chinedu, leading him the other way.
Fighting beside Uduak was a more pleasant experience than fighting against him. Tau knocked one more man out of the skirmish but saw Uduak bloody one, almost break the leg of another, and charge a third to the ground. Then, having adapted to the momentum of the skirmish and getting over his awe at Uduak’s power, Tau sought his next opponent, only there wasn’t one.
Scale Chisomo had been eliminated to a man. It took a moment, but, realizing they’d won, Scale Jayyed cheered, swords and shields raised high as bets were traded to the sounds of grumbling and curses all along the battlefield’s sidelines.
Out of the fifty-four men they’d started with, Tau’s scale had thirty-two still standing. Yaw was a few strides away, his face bright with an ear-to-ear smile as he patted Chinedu on the back. Uduak and Hadith had survived too. Hadith was standing close to the big man, talking to him and pointing at details on the battlefield. Tau imagined he was already going over where they’d done things right and where they could have done better.
Tau turned away, trying to remain grim, but couldn’t hold back the smile. It started small, then crept across his face until he was grinning like he’d been in the sun too long. He pumped his fist, the wrong fist, and almost fell over from the pain. Eyes watering from the hurt, his mood still didn’t sour. Jayyed’s five had made it through the skirmish and the contest had been won. His scale had won!
Tau knew the rest of the day was his to do with as he saw fit. The surviving skirmishers of the winning scale were gifted that as a winner’s bounty, but he wouldn’t waste the time, not after Jayyed’s speech.
“Well fought,” Jayyed said, addressing the scale. “But we took too many losses and I own much of the blame for that. I’ve paid too much attention to individual sparring, thinking fifty-four men with better training could ensure victory. It’s not so. If we are to be the best, we can’t be just better-trained men, better fighters. We have to be the better scale.
“Chisomo had us on that front, though his initiates couldn’t make use of their advantage. Truth? I’m thankful they exposed our weakness. Now we can see it for what it is and burn it away. We’re going to learn how to work better together… tomorrow.
“Survivors, you have your day. The men who did not survive—you fought hard and well. You should be proud. Still, you have more to do and I leave you in Aqondise Anan’s capable hands.”
The men who fell in the skirmish couldn’t have looked less happy.
“Think the mess hall serves masmas this early?” Hadith asked Tau and Uduak, drawing a smile from the big man.
“Do have a thirst,” Uduak said.
“Let’s gather Yaw and Chinedu, those slackards, and find out,” Hadith offered.
“Going to spar with the rest for a bit,” Tau said. Uduak tilted his head at Tau, staring at him like he was an oddity, or an idiot. Hadith looked like he was going to say something, thought better of it, and walked away instead.
“Uduak,” he called, “let’s ease that thirst.”
Uduak waited a breath, still watching Tau. He grunted and strode off.
“Out of the dirt,” Anan shouted to the men from Jayyed’s scale who had gone down in the skirmish. “You thought that was a beating. You’ve seen nothing. Run twice round the grounds and then we do some real fighting!”
The men who didn’t have to be carried to the infirmary looked wearied and defiant, but they got up and they ran, and Tau went with them. He could feel Jayyed’s eyes on him.
Let him watch, Tau thought, as Jayyed’s words came to mind: “The days without difficulty are the days you do not improve.”
Tau ran harder. He was not the strongest, the quickest, or the most talented, not by any measure. He knew this and knew he could not control this. However, he could control his effort, the work he put in, and there he would not be beaten.
He made a pact with himself, a pact he swore on his father’s soul. If he were asked to run a thousand strides, he would run two thousand. If he were told to spar three rounds, he would spar six. And if he fought a match to surrender, the man who surrendered would not be him. He would fight until he won or he died. There would be, he swore, no days without difficulty.
CHAPTER SIX
BATTLEGROUNDS
Jayyed was true to his word. The scale trained teamwork and tactics, which were new to Tau, who found the concept of coordinating battle efforts complicated. It worked, though.
Scale Jayyed fought two more skirmishes and won them. Tau survived both. So did Yaw, Chinedu, and Hadith. Uduak was “killed” in the second one, after men from Scale Thoko targeted him.
In that battle, several of Thoko’s men swarmed Uduak, using the same strategy the hedeni did against an Enraged Ingonyama. Uduak made them pay. He fought like one of the mythical beasts from Osonte, dropping three of Scale Thoko’s men before going down. One of them had a cracked skull.
Before Uduak fell, Tau tried to help. He forced his way to the big man’s side, and for a time, they fought back to back. Thoko’s men ignored Tau, thinking the scarred runt unworthy of their attention. Their minds changed after Tau battered two of them to the dirt. And they realized the full extent of their error when Yaw, Chinedu, and Hadith joined him, helping Scale Jayyed rampage through the Thoko ranks.
Tau spent the rest of that day training with the men from Scale Jayyed who had fallen. When they ran, Uduak ran beside Tau. When they sparred together, Uduak was less violent.
Tau noticed but didn’t think on it. His training consumed him. His dedication was absolute, and the hardest fights were not with the other men. They were with himself.
Every day a part of him whispered that he could rest, that he had done enough, that he could stop. Every day, the lies were whispered, and every day, Tau made himself relive the moment his father died. It was sick, masochistic. It was the only way he could keep himself going.
Time blurred, days cascaded one into another, the Omehi’s endless war with the hedeni raged, and an initiate from Scale Idowu died in his bed. He was found in the morning. He’d bled from his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, and his skin had ruptured like meat cooked too long on a spit.
Demon-death, the rumors went. It might even be true. Tau knew a family back in Kerem who had lost a child to a demon-death. Whatever the actual case, everyone paid more attention to their morning and evening prayers.
It was around this time that Tau’s wrist healed enough to wield a blade. He didn’t trust it and still fought with his off hand. It made sense; he’d become better with his left than he’d ever been with his right, and on the day they marched for the Crags to watch some of the other Ihashe scales fight the Indlovu, Tau was a difficult match for everyone at the isikolo.
The march to the Crags took from predawn to midmorning, and Jayyed counseled his scale on what they were going to see. “All of this prepares us for war. The skirmishes in the Crags allow Indlovu initiates to experience fighting against heavy odds. For us, and the Northern Ihashe Isikolo, it’s a chance to hone our tactics.”
“And get the bones kicked out of us,” Themba mumbled as he marched beside Tau.