351 - The words they intone

I banged the sandtimer onto its side myself, got up and threw on clothes and weapons as she told me more. He’d been fairly low, perhaps sixty man-lengths above the tree-tops, assigned to drop a firepot on a sub-general’s tent; he’d done that and was turning to head back to their landing-base; he’d gone down spinning instead of diving; trees had broken his fall; it had been close enough to an Arkan camp that they’d sent out a unit to check. In the dark and through leaves, the scouts could not see what condition he and his wing were in.

“Worst possibility strategically is if if they scrape him, so let’s get that out of the way first,” I said. “What else does he know?”

“Not much, omores. He is not a commander.” I’d learned not to ask commanders of people who’d been captured whether there were any personal things that might be scraped out of them that could hurt them; as often as not the commanders don’t know.

“Until we find out different, we have to go on the assumption they’re scraping him. Meaning the Arkans can know all he does about a-moyawa short of the skills in his hands; you know better than I what that is. Does he have any close family here? The A-niah...”

“We left four up scouting; the rest of us are gathering. Cousins, no brothers or sisters. But he and Mali have something going and we were starting to think it’s serious. Chevenga, can we do a raid and get him out tonight?”

We were just going out the tent-door. “Maybe,” I said, spinning back in to check Abatzas’s bead-clock. It was a little under a bead before daylight. “If you don’t object to me leading it.” The further into Arko we reached and the bigger the army got, the more cagey everyone in the command council got about me risking myself.

“Of course not,” she said. Here with so many on our side, I could forget the Mezem, where we’d had only each other and Mana, and become so used to seeing each other dance on the sword-edge every fight.

I asked her what I must. The place was close enough, a tenth to get to at an easy run; it had been about seventy-five paces off the first line of Arkan sentries; it was the camp of a light-armed rejin with only the officers’ horses. I sent out Sishana and Ilachesa to roust the darkwork crew out of bed, including Megan, asked Niku to pass on my love to the A-niah and say I’d be with them once I was finished more pressing business, and began gearing myself up night-style. Krero was off duty; with any luck we’d be back before he woke up.

I knew the odds were long, unless the Arkans were such fools as not to have Jusho and his moyawa at the centre of their attention, meaning very well-guarded. Because of that I summoned a strong darkwork crew, a hundred of us. Once we were ready to go, I got Niku to signal up to the scouts—they have a night-code using two torches—to give one last detailed report. I met the one who came down at the landing base.

“Many more torches now, Vaimoy,” she told me. “He is in a tree, hanging from high branches. He didn’t release from his harness, I’m guessing, because he’ll fall if he does—the tree is very tall—or he can’t. We’ve started hearing chopping and sawing, so they’re either cutting the branch off or the tree down or something. I estimate that there’s maybe forty or fifty solas with the work-crew.”

The night was overcast and dark, part of why the A-niah had been doing this, a good night to not be seen. We set off into at a run, torchless, our only light several small kraumaks, beating our way through the woods. They’d been wise enough to set up a guard-line around the place, the guards in pairs and all of them armed with dart-tubes. I was just unclipping Chirel when my second-in-command—by Ikal convention I was calling her Vaen—laid her hand on my shoulder. “Chevenga, you’ve let us know where they are by your weapon-sense; will you please let anyone but yourself kill them?”

The moment a general starts to think of himself as important is the beginning of his ruin, goes the old saying. And yet it could be argued that if I didn’t think of myself as important, I was delusional. I wondered how the king who’d cut the knot, and those other old conquerors, who had all been fighting commanders, had dealt with this. I gave my people leave, and they cleared off six at the cost of one stun-darting, giving us a good gap to enter.

To go in, though, I led. This forest was not like the Roskati, the tree-tops so thick that nothing grew below; there was plenty of brush, good for our purposes. I went by the sounds of chopping and sawing—low, they were going to take down the whole tree—and the yelled orders. I halted to send back an order: “Those of you who come from forest places, you know how it is with cutting down trees; you can plan to fell it one way and it can go the exact opposite. If you hear crackings, and then the leaves brushing against other leaves and branches snapping branches, and the Arkans yelling—I don’t know what their word is, but it’ll sound triumphant—and it sounds as if it’s coming towards you, run for all you’re worth, not straight away from it but to the sides. We won’t abort mission—depending on how it falls, he could survive. Listen for my night-bird calls.” It was relayed back through the group in whispers.

A little further, with no torches yet in sight, I felt an odd tightness, first across my back between my shoulderblades, then all over my body, just like that which predicts a stroke from someone I’m fighting; but I could see no one and weapon-sense nothing. I did the shake of the kraumak that meant “halt,” and strained to hear as we all stood silent. That feeling does not lie, I told myself, though I was itching to go on; dawn was not far off. I stepped forward silently, and felt the edge of something flare up out of nowhere into weapon-sense, flying at my sword-side ear, and heard several hiss-yells of “Cheng sword-side!” at once.

It was a foot, doing a kick so hard and fast it might have snapped my neck, as it was intended to, except that I ducked and threw up my shoulder in the last instant. Just glancing, it knocked me off my feet and palsied my shoulder badly enough that I couldn’t draw Chirel as I went down.

Of course I’d sparred blind against unarmed people to play with what weapon-sense told me then, and what I’d learned was this: once a person starts thinking of some part of himself as a weapon, I start sensing it; the more he thinks that way—and it is total when he’s mid-strike, of course—the clearer it is to me. (Because of this, it is actually harder for me to spar blindfolded against someone unarmed than it is for many other warriors; because we are sparring, the other person does not think of his hands and feet as weapons, but training tools, so I don’t know where they are until I’ve been tapped. But this does not apply with weapons-sparring, because those weapons are weapons. If you see what I mean.)

He leapt on me, fists coming lightning-fast for my head, hoping to catch me while startlement still froze me; I caught him above the knee with one foot, throwing his hand-blows awry so I took one on the same poor shoulder and the other on my cuirass. I got my shield-hand over and slashed across his guts with my short-sword from the waist-draw, finding no armour, only flesh. He didn’t yell, the wound not hurting right away as happens with severe ones sometimes; then four blades were in his heart and lungs from through his back, one tip tapping my cuirass, and I felt him thrash for a moment and die on me, his mouth letting out a gout of warm blood onto my neck. “I’m all right,” I said. “Silence, listen for alarms.” I pushed him off me and got up as soundlessly as I could.

We heard none. “All-Spirit knows how, but that happened quietly enough,” I said.

“A kevyalin unarmed straw-hair, kyash!” said Vaen. “Chevenga, they were kevyalin expecting you. The woods could be full of them; how would you know?”

An Arkan commander with half a brain, I thought, setting my teeth. I took a deep breath, and worked my sword-arm, willing away the pain. “Then we go en garde. And I’ll take a tighter point.”

“Or let someone else take point, where they’re expecting you to be, so you don’t get this kyash. I heard a cursed loud flesh-thump on you, Cheng; are you sure you’re all right?” That was Alaecha.

“Yes,” I said, letting no pain into my whisper. I knew what Kaninjer would tell me, when I got back: every thread of the shoulder-muscle had taken minute impact-damage, so the whole was weakened. But I’d fought through worse. “We’re not going to abort. But, yes, you take point, and I’m on your sword-side.” I didn’t like it, but the best generals have no likes or dislikes. “Swords out, alatal cocked.”

We did find another unarmed solas, but this one tried to slip back to report instead of attacking, and Evechera took him down with a spear from his alat. He made several gasping yells before we silenced him eternally, but the workers were making too much clamour to hear him.

Now sparkles of torchlight began showing through the trees. I pocketed the kraumak and sent back, “Go cat-foot, no more words until further orders.” Like a ghost made up of ninety-five people moving as one, we went on.

Words began to come clear. “Keep cutting, okas, it’ll be any moment now!” —“My humble toiling God, what’s still holding it up?” —“Any moment now, we’ll see what this flying demon is made of.” —“If it falls towards us instead of away, run like every demon in Hayel is chasing you—not straight away but sideways.” So—they were cutting the tree to fall more or less where we were. I touched Vaen’s shoulder, getting her to cut us to the shield-side. When we were side-on, and I had a good view, I signed halt.

It was true there was plenty of torchlight, needful with axes swinging. The okas toiled, cursing and spitting; the solas haughtily waited. There was nothing for us to do but wait, too, though we’d have to abort and retreat if it took too long; light would come, and the dawn changing of the guard, which would betray us. Just when I was wondering whether I’d led them on a fool’s mission, I heard from far above, Jusho’s voice. “Aaaaaamaaaaah Kaaaaalandris!” He was alive. The cry wasn’t one of distress; it sounded ritual. Most of the Arkans startled silent. “That was a man’s voice if I ever heard one!” one hissed. “Aaaaaaaabaaaaaaah Tiiiiiiiiyriaaaaah!” There was pain in it, too. Someone pushed up through the others behind me, and grabbed my arm so hard her nails dug in where there was no armour: Ziva, the one Niah I had brought along, the best of their darkworkers. “You have permission to speak,” I said.

“He is going to… aiigh!” His words, cried out almost like a song, broke her whisper up into sobs. I tried to understand. “Vai”… emerge… “venga”… something imperative, that must be done… “Zalo” …light or blessed… “Ta saho zalo msah…” I understood that, of course: it is as it should be. “Moy a mi vriah”… fly to my freedom? “Si kampa sou..” “Aiiigh, Jusho!” Ziva sobbed. Lord Friend, but they never say “sou,” what does that— “He is dead,” she whispered. There was a wordless sound, half-way between gasp and yell; then a crashing started down through the branches, increasing in speed as it came closer. The Arkans all yelled warning to each other and scrambled clear. I heard Jusho’s bones break—his skull first, as he hit head-first—but he was dead of the wound in his throat already, his fall making it yawn further open. His corpse settled to stillness, twisted like a broken doll, the pouring of his blood the only motion.

Lord Friend Death. The words they intone before they commit suicide. Like Mana, he’d slit his own throat, and released from his harness at the same time. Perhaps he’d felt the tree move slightly. He could not know its fall would kill him, so he’d decided to make sure.

“Abort,” I said. “Withdraw.” It had been him I’d come to rescue, not the wing; it was one thing to fight in, cut loose a man who could run with us, or be carried by four, and fight out; it was another to wait for the wreckage of a wing to come down with a tree, fight in, try to untangle what was left while solas ran for more solas, and fight out. As we cat-footed away, I put my arm around Ziva’s shoulders, and kept it there until we were far enough away to run.