Tau said nothing. He twirled his swords, loosening his wrists, and broke into a loping jog. Mayumbu bared his teeth, joined Tau in a run, and bellowed the Noble war cry. “Blood. Will. Show!”
COMMON
The Crags lost their quiet and the bloodthirsty calls of women and men echoed across the mountainside. Tau imagined how confused the sequestered scales would be, hearing the tumult. He centered himself. It was time to work.
Mayumbu, bigger, holding a longer sword, came in range first and sent a thundering blow for Tau’s neck. His sword, moving faster than an untrained eye could track, ripped through the air, keening as it went. Tau swept beneath it, came up, and smashed the hilt of his strong-side sword into Mayumbu’s wrist, snapping it. Using both their momentum, he thrust the dulled point of his other blade into the leather armor covering Mayumbu’s guts. Tau’s aim was true and he hit the gap between two protective bronze plates, piercing the expensive animal hide, the undershirt beneath, and Mayumbu’s stomach.
Mayumbu was a massive man. Tau braced. The collision pushed him back a stride and, though less time had passed than it took to draw breath, the men were entangled.
Mayumbu, standing over Tau, grabbed him by the neck and crashed his sword arm across Tau’s back. Tau was looking into his face. He wanted to see the moment when Mayumbu realized it was over.
It wasn’t until Mayumbu’s broken wrist and empty fingers slapped across Tau’s shoulder blades. It wasn’t until he tried to draw a breath and the pain hit, from two handspans’ worth of bronze buried in his core, that Mayumbu realized he was undone. He screamed then, the pain catching up with the moment and taking him somewhere else.
Tau ripped the Noble’s weakened grip away from his neck and stepped back. His blade came with him, sliding out of Mayumbu with the sound of a stick pulled too quick from mud. Mayumbu fell to his knees, gasping and gawping.
He was scared. Tau could see it in his eyes and, though it was not mercy, Tau took away the fear. He flew his sword’s dulled edge into Mayumbu’s head, smashing a dent in the man’s helmet over his temple and felling him, sending him to the grass in a heap.
Tau remained over the body, glaring at the rest of the Indlovu, daring them to do anything other than what they’d promised. The Crags had gone quiet again, even the few wispy clouds in the sky holding their place.
“Goddess’s mercy,” said the first Indlovu, going to one knee.
“Goddess’s mercy,” said the next and the next and the next, their calls for mercy flowing fast, like water from the bathtub tap in the umqondisi quarter.
“The skirmish is won by Scale Jayyed,” came the voice of the wiry citadel officiant. He sounded shaken. “Scale Jayyed advances to the semifinals.”
The tap opened further and the crowd became part of its flow, drowning the plateau in the deluge of their shouts, cheers, triumph, and loss.
Scale Jayyed rushed to Tau’s side and they surrounded him, celebrating him and their victory, but he neither heard nor felt them. He was looking down at Mayumbu’s blood as it ran through the grass and into the dirt. It was dark, arterial, and nothing about it looked noble at all.
Tau had never seen men so exuberant without masmas or gaum. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn the Goddess had turned their cups of water to olu. They were in the scale’s tent and men were dancing, hooting. Azima had his drums, which he took everywhere, between his legs and he beat them ferociously, if not rhythmically. Anan was soaked; the men of the scale had doused him with water from the drinking pails.
“Semifinals!” crowed Yaw, pulling Tau around in a tight circle as if they were dancers at a Harvest festival. “Semifinals!” he said, spinning off to find a new partner.
Uduak caught Tau’s eye, raised his water cup, and drank from it. Tau returned the gesture.
“You shouldn’t have agreed, Tau!” said Hadith, weaving through the men as if he were drunk. “The plan only let you dispatch one man. You’ve fallen from the list of greats slated to become Ingonyama.”
“There’s tomorrow,” Tau said.
“That there is!” said Hadith. “To tomorrow!” he shouted, thrusting his cup of water high in the air and spilling its contents over Tau and several others.
“To tomorrow!” came the voices of close to sixty sword brothers as the tent flaps were whisked aside and Jayyed strode in, his appearance hushing the men.
“We have a match,” Jayyed told them. “In the semifinals, we fight on the urban battleground. Our opponents lost no men today, and tomorrow we face them at dusk. Tomorrow, we fight Scale Osa.”
The men murmured, unsure how to react. Tau’s eyes were bright. “Kellan.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
OSA
Everything had gone wrong. Uduak and his men had fallen, Yaw’s unit hadn’t been seen for half a span, and Tau was trapped in a crumbling building, surrounded by twenty-seven Indlovu.
The skirmish had started slow. Both sides had been cautious, taking ground in the cluttered urban battleground with care. To goad Scale Osa and fulfill his promise to Tau, Hadith gave Tau three men to use as a roving group of assassins.
Tau, with Runako and the twins, Kuende and Mshinde, had been like a reaper at harvest. Whenever the Indlovu were otherwise engaged, separated, or distracted, Tau and his half team found and dispatched them. It had worked well, until Kellan adjusted. After losing too many, he kept his men together.
In spite of this, Hadith wanted Scale Jayyed divided into the Chosen’s standard three units. He felt its flexibility gave them more options than Kellan’s unified scale. Perhaps that would have been the case, if Uduak’s unit had not gotten cut off. Or if Yaw’s unit had not been blocked by buildings, unable to join the fight.
At the time, Kellan had thirty-one Indlovu to Uduak’s nine Ihashe. Tau demanded they go in. Hadith refused. Without Yaw’s unit, they wouldn’t do much good and would only join in Uduak’s fate. Tau knew Hadith was right, but being right didn’t help.
As they held back, Hadith stared wild-eyed at the fighting, at Uduak, who was last to fall. The big man did not claim the Goddess’s mercy. The Indlovu beat him unconscious before he could. Then they continued to beat him.
The nearest officiant was a citadel umqondisi. It was his duty to call incapacitated men out of bounds. When Uduak went down, he turned his back, letting the Nobles do as they would.
Hadith, mind lost, ran in, shouting Uduak’s name. That forced Tau and the rest of the unit into combat. It was nine Lessers against three times their number in Nobles. It was not winnable.
Runako, Kuende, and Mshinde were lost, and Tau called a ragged retreat. They ran and Tau had to drag Hadith away with them. The Indlovu gave chase, but the six Lessers evaded their pursuers, taking cover in a set of buildings.
As they scurried through the empty replicas, desperate to stay hidden from the hunting Indlovu, Themba cursed Hadith’s hysteria. Tau grabbed Themba by the front of his gambeson and told him that by engaging the Indlovu, they had saved Uduak’s life.
Hadith’s attack had pulled the Indlovu away from the big man, and with the fighting moved on, the umqondisi officiant had been forced to declare Uduak and the other dispatched men in his unit out of bounds. Uduak had been carried off the battleground. Tau couldn’t be sure, but he believed Uduak was alive. He had to believe it.