A bird with bright blue-and-yellow feathers crept beneath the stone outer wall of the city, digging its long bill into the sand. It unearthed a cluster of white eggs and cracked one open, gobbling up a dark, slimy chunk before cracking open another.
A gargantuan black alligator burst from the water and snapped its powerful jaws, only for the bird to flap its wings and jump away, fly off, and disappear beyond the trees in the distance.
Slowly, the beast nuzzled her nose in the sand, covering back the broken eggs and resting her massive snout over them.
An even larger alligator straddled the black slate road, resting her heavy tail on the wooden drawbridge that unfolded across the river. Beside her, a man with medium-green skin and a widow's peak hairline stood. His build was lean and toned, and he wore a shimmering white silk loincloth with black embroidery in the same symbols from the cover of the strange book in the library that no one could translate.
I walked at the lead of the procession with the rest of my team.
Dax gaped. "Gods, that is one big gator."
"That one's Shaedi."
Ta'o corrected me. "That's Horus, bro."
Bilal chuckled.
"That's Shaedi," I insisted. "She's the fat one."
"She's not fat, she's pregnant. And that's Horus; look at his foot." Half the creature's left front foot had long been ripped off.
"Taganu," I shouted from across the field. "Is that Shaedi or Horus?"
He cocked one eyebrow and chuckled with his hands behind his back. "This one's Gaijin!"
I checked Ta'o, who pursed his lips and looked in the opposite direction while the rest of my team laughed.
Still laughing, Taganu knelt low and tapped the beast on the side of his belly. Her belly. His or her belly. Gaijin pushed off on all fours and slid across the grass, down through the reeds, and disappeared into the water.
"By the way," I turned to the new recruits. "I don't recommend swimming in the moat. It's kinda muddy, bugs get in your nose, it's just unpleasant is all."
Finn nodded, fighting to keep a straight face. "Probably cold, too."
Half the men shook with laughter.
Rolon couldn't peel his eyes from a young, white-skinned Tobori lady who watched over three lambs nibbling on the grass. She was nearly naked as the rest of us, with a number branded on her arm, and didn't turn to look at us once. As for Rolon, Gaius the Unformidable snapped his fingers in front of his face and got no response.
We stepped onto the drawbridge. Taganu reached his arms out to embrace Ta'o, who returned his embrace. A small, green vɪta'o who was barely an inch or two taller than the last time I'd seen her raced from beyond the gate and encircled me with excited chirps. She bounded among my men, sniffing around and came back to me, craning her tiny neck with a chirp.
She raced down along the whole bison train, rushing beneath carts and between men's legs only to dart back to me once more with a chirp.
My heart broke. "He's dead."
She tilted her head to one side and chirped.
"He's not coming back."
A tear trailed down my cheek as she wove in and out once more, sniffing the wheels, sniffing knees, and nearly getting kicked by one irritated bison before flitting back over to me, only to crane her tiny neck up once more with a chirp.
Behind me, Diamond bellowed out a guttural string of clicks, caws, and chirps, and the baby turned her attention to her. Mum sniffed me up and down my body, pausing at where my tear had fallen, and turned her head down to brush the side of her face in my cheek. Then, with her baby still chirping, she ushered her off with her snout and brought her back to the trees of the vɪta'o yard.
Taganu directed the bison-drawn carts to the left of the massive stone administration building, and the recruits inside, where he would write their names in the book. That would take a while.
As for me, Princess Rosalynd leaned her arms on the stone handrail of her second-floor balcony and locked her light-emerald eyes on me directly. She wore a shimmery gold loincloth hung from a white silk sash that wrapped around her hips and ended in gold tassels about her knees. Her white-streaked hair was done in a single braid that hung over her shoulder, and a silver crescent-moon pendant hung from her neck that sparkled in the blazing sunlight.
She did not remove her eyes from me, not for a second.
Dax stood beside me looking up at her. He smirked, checked me, and called out. "Ta'o. How do you say, you're in deep shit?"
Ta'o chuckled and glanced up at her, and she still didn't release her gaze. "That would be pozu'asa ʃayixu. Literally, it means, the worms hunger for you." And he slapped my shoulder with a grin.
Let's get this over with.
I took two steps towards an archway in the verandah at the ground level when she called down. "Bring your team."
"My team?"
She nodded. "I want to meet them."
I elbowed my way through the sweaty throng of fifty-some-odd men gathered around Taganu's desk to ask if he could process them first, but he was already halfway through my twelve.
"Gaius of Zoinia."
"Right here," he stepped forward.
"Naveris, special skills."
"Rachel of Zoinia, and I'm a tanner."
Taganu wrote that down and handed him some coins. "Kurt?"
The tall man with the wide chin stepped forward.
"Where are you from, sir."
Kurt shrugged. "Not from anywhere."
"I have to write something down."
With a deep breath, Kurt elaborated. "Mum died birthing me, dad moved around until some baron lopped his head off. On my own after that. Never stayed in one place long enough to be from anywhere."
Taganu paused and thought for a moment, then wrote down, Carthia.
As soon as my team was finished, we all climbed the stone steps to the second floor and made our way down the hallway between accordion paper partitions. The one on the left had a painted image of a giant alligator with coils of a massive python wrapped around its body. It held the snake's neck in its jaws, while the python's jaws were open and facing the alligator. The partition on the right had an image of fire coming down from the sky in red coals with trails of black smoke. The forest, village houses, bodies, everything was on fire except for a stone building with a dome at the very center.
Princess Rosalynd sat on a bag chair with her toes buried in the tufts of a plush woolen rug. To her left sat Commander Rayitiu with his hands clasped at his waist. He looked up at me with a big smile across his lips. Standing in the far corner beside a tall potted plant was the Imperial Voice. He watched me.
"Have a seat," Rosalynd waved her hand around the room. There were exactly thirteen empty bag chairs arranged in a circle. "All of you. Please."
I was about to sit across from her, but she tapped the one to her right instead. "I want you over here."
I sat. "I know what I did was…"
In her hand was a stack of papers that curled at both ends. She shuffled through them and pulled one out to look at it. "Which of you is Finn of Sutra?"
"That'll be me, Love. I'm guessing you're the princess Caleb here spoke so glowingly of?
"Oh?" She raised her eyebrows at him.
Dax added with a sly grin. "He said you were merciful and kind! The nicest princess he's ever met!"
In the corner, the Imperial Voice scrunched his eyes and laughed. Rosalynd buried her face in her hands and convulsed hard with quiet laughter. Even Commander chuckled at the audacity of Dax's bullshit. It took her a moment to settle, but when she looked back up, she had a warm smile across her face.
Finally, with a deep breath she continued, looking around the room at each of my men. "Here's the problem. Caleb, here," she rested her hand gently on my knee, "has made promises he does not have the authority to keep."
Shit.
She continued. "The mɪwe'iʃi have been using Praying Mantis to launch attacks directly on the flood plain. They've killed two groups of harvesters already, and two days ago they assaulted Dog's Arse."
"Ayo, they assaulted what?" Gaius's eyes popped wide.
Commander chuckled and answered in his deep baritone. "Tower Two. They built siege towers and nearly breached the walls but for naval reinforcements from Tower Three. Even so, the strain on our food supply has already begun. There are swaths of farmland that are too dangerous for our people to go. Crops are already rotting in the field."
Rosalynd took it from there. "We need men out there yesterday. I need captains…"
Shit, shit.
"... something tells me that the captains I need are in this room. Finn, Dax, and Bilal—"
I pulled my face back in shock. "You're taking Bilal from me?"
She gazed at me with a cold face and spoke matter-of-factly. "And I need two more."
"Who?"
"You tell me."
That was worse. I knew there would be consequences. It was bad enough she was breaking apart my dream team, but she wanted me to be complicit?
"Caleb," she squeezed my knee gently and settled her eyes on my lap. "I know you love Carthia. I know you believe in what we're building here. What I need from you right now is to set aside whatever personal, selfish motivations you might have and think about what's best for everyone. I need two more captains, and you know these men better than I do."
I looked around the room. My team. For less than twenty-four hours, they were mine.
"Can I trust you?" she added.
Beyond the fracture she'd already demanded, Charis would go with Dax if given the choice. Probably others. Why couldn't she just put me in the sling?
She was trusting me. With a deep breath, I had to name the two strongest leaders, most respected, most likely to keep their men alive. "Ta'o."
"Bro!" his jaw dropped.
"You personally know every sekɪwa we have, and your investment in this place is stronger than anyone else here. You can fight, you're methodical, creative, and you inspire respect. You just need to learn to shoot."
A mild wave of laughter rippled through the others.
Rosalynd raised one eyebrow at me. "Have you considered—"
"Yes, I have." I locked my eyes on her. His men could be taught what to do if he had an episode.
After a while, she lowered her gaze. "OK. One more."
"Don't name me," Renou spoke up. "I'm on your team. I'd rather stay."
He was the only one. All the others looked at me in expectation, which meant anyone I didn't name would be disappointed. But I had to set that aside as well. If she trusted me to do this after all I'd put her through, then I owed it to her. "Kurt."
The man sat up straight and looked around the room. I let everyone down, starting with myself.
Rool spoke first. To Kurt. "I'm on your team."
Dax glanced at Charis, who turned to the princess. "Can I go with him?"
Bilal spoke next. "We should go downstairs and do a proper draft."
And just like that, my whole ex-team got up. Their footfalls faded down the hall as they left me behind.
I couldn't.
A small anole lizard scampered up a stone column beside the archway leading out to the balcony overlooking the main gate of the city. It jumped onto a tall leaf of a plant that grew out of a ceramic pot in one corner, snagged a ball of something wrapped up in spider silk, and scampered off before a fist-sized black spider with a red hourglass on its abdomen could catch it.
"Are you OK?" Princess Rosalynd watched my face with intensity to rival the Imperial Voice who stood silent throughout the whole meeting. "I know this isn't what you wanted."
Was I OK. The whole trip, my whole point for going there was wasted. Worse than wasted; I lost Ta'o and Bilal who would have still been on my team had I not gone. After everything I went through to recruit them. "If I include myself, that's six captains. If each of us has twelve, that's seventy-two men. There aren't that many recruits."
"There are more," she said. "I actually have three I'd like you to take under your wing. Do you remember Kaye? He's one of Miyani's people."
The kid from the cafe who asked to sleep with my girlfriend. "He's a bit young."
Commander's deep baritone filled the room. "He wants to fight. Specifically, he wants to fight for you."
"Why me?"
"You still don't understand what you did, do you? No one survives out there alone. No one. No one survives out there after dark. I have intel that your battle name is already being spoken out there. Kaye wants to fight for you, but I promise he won't be the last."
"Can he shoot?"
Commander pursed his lips. "I'll leave you to find that out."
"And the other two?"
Rosalynd answered. "Do you remember two Umeazi brothers who came here as runaway slaves? The younger one stayed behind at Praying Mantis while the older one came with a group of three others who left for Dog's Arse the day before. We've put him in four different units, and he hasn't gotten along with his captain yet."
"And you're giving him to me. How nice."
The imperial voice grinned wide and chuckled silently. Still watching.
"He has experience," she added. "He's been in a few fights already, and yes, he can shoot. His name is Tenae. The other one just got off the boat."
"What boat?"
Commander explained. "Smugglers still sneak past the Gate to Hell under cover of night from time to time. We found him in a shipping crate this morning nearly starved to death."
"I need you ready to deploy tomorrow morning," Rosalynd continued.
"Tomorrow!" my jaw dropped.
"We need you out there…"
"No," I shook my head.
"Caleb," she tried again.
But I insisted. "No. I need time to train my new team."
"We need men out there…"
"No." I crossed my arms. "Three days to train the new guys, or I keep my dream team. That's my offer."
"This isn't a negotiation."
"I don't care if it's not a negotiation, that's my offer."
She soured her whole face and glared at me. Behind her, Commander fought to contain a smirk across his lips, while the Imperial Voice felt no such constraint. I weighed the option of saying anything further on the matter, but chose instead to keep quiet and wait for a reply.
She gave me one. "Caleb, we're desperate. I know those eighteen carts you came in with look like a lot, but there are fifteen-thousand people here. That won't last. My father's wife…" she closed her eyes and breathed in deep.
Her fingers tightened around the papers in her lap. "I know that woman. She'll make sure to send just enough provision to claim she's helping out and not a single crumb beyond that. We can't depend on the pass, and what little gets smuggled past the Gate to Hell won't feed a fraction of the city for a day. If we lose the flood plain, Carthia starves. We've already lost pieces of it, and we're about to lose even more. I need you out there. I need you out there a week ago, but Gaedi kept stalling on sending you through for Mother-knows-why. Please understand."
"I understand," I nodded, "but I also understand the toll of attrition this war is taking on Heralia. You can't keep letting men get killed and then call up some more; it's going to break at some point, and you know it wasn't that long ago I came down from the pass. We're closer to that than you think. Now, I want to survive, and I want my men to survive, but you need men to survive. I need time. Those other five captains you just minted, they need time with their new teams…"
"Are you willing to sacrifice Miyani's people for your precious time?"
"Are you willing to throw Ta'o's life away out of desperation?"
She froze. Her face turned to stone. Yeah, I bite, too.
After a time, she came back. "Didn't you already spend time training them at the Lake of Doom?"
"I need to know what my team is capable of. I need my team to know what each other is capable of. We need time to form a group." I leaned over to look at Commander, hoping for an assist.
He chuckled lightly. "Why are you looking at me?"
He glanced back at the Imperial Voice, who wore an amused smirk of his own.
The two men chuckled together, then returned their attention to me and Rosalynd.
She glared at the two of them before turning back to me with her lips pursed. "One day."
"Two."
"I can't do that."
"Two," I countered, "or I keep my dream team."
"That's not even an option."
The thought entered my mind that if she put me in the sling for a few days, that would buy Renou time to train the others.
She stared at me blankly, so I looked her dead in the eye. "Give us two days, and we'll take back Praying Mantis."
Father in Heaven, what did I just say?
Behind her, the Imperial Voice cocked one eyebrow high and rubbed his chin. Commander's eyes bulged wide and he stared at me. A flash of hope escaped her face before she could stop it.
I had to salvage it somehow, else my word would be meaningless. "Not right away. I mean… we'd have to plan…"
"Two days," she said.
Really?
Rosalynd reached to a small wooden table behind her for a glass goblet with some amber fluid and drank a good amount from it. Then she set it back down. "Two days."
I wasn't sure if I'd won anything or not. Two days to train my new unit on the promise of something I couldn't deliver.
Downstairs, Taganu was still getting names. The five newly-minted captains mingled about recruiting volunteers, while Rolon worked as a proxy for me. His friends Daemon and Aydel were now on my team, apparently.
I gathered them together to share the results of my conversation with the princess, leaving out the part where we would assault a heavily-guarded fortress ten miles away through thick jungle.
"The fuck?" Kurt called out. Ta'o raised a finger at him. "Sorry. What xayufipiga is that?"
Finn crossed his arms at me. "What the hell are we supposed to do with only two days?"
"Miyani's back at the Lake of Doom," Dax added. "Do we even have a sekɪwa?"
I gazed at him in thought. It was a good question, and I knew exactly who to ask.
Beneath the Terrible Sun, I crossed the avenue of black slate that led from the main gate into the heart of the city, and stepped over to the vita'o yard. Hidden behind a low bush and tucked in a shadow was Lazybum. He sat perfectly still; I almost didn't see him. I stepped between the wooden posts that delineated their territory.
Immediately he shot up and raced at me on his hind legs, squawking and hissing.
I stepped behind the posts. "I saw you."
He clicked twice.
"Yes, I saw you. I was looking right at you, and you know it. Anyway, I need to see Ahmi. Can you please take me to her?"
He squawked and led me around the perimeter of the yard, past a host of mango trees and coconut trees, trees with those berries Blue liked to splatter Miyani with. Trees occasionally broke enough to offer a glimpse of the outer stone wall of the city, and Lazybum brought me to the same narrow path I'd taken the day I tried to hit on her.
"Thank you," I patted the side of his neck.
He tagged my chest with his snout and jumped away with excited chirps and clicks.
That made me laugh. "Later. I need to talk to her first."
As soon as he turned to walk away, I lunged at him, tagged the end of his tail, and took off running.
He chirped and raced after me, though I had no hope of outrunning him.
Eventually I came to the same wooden shack beside the clearing as before.
Last time, Ahmi was instructing several little girls on the basics of not falling off their lizards. This time, she had a long, wooden table with nearly a hundred small ceramic pots laid out, and three much older girls gathered around.
"Hey Caleb!" Dayumi was one of them.
Another was a Goloagi girl with an old, faded burn scar from a slave number branded onto each arm as a child along with a bite scar over her elbow. The other was Na'uhui, about the same height as Dayumi but a little more muscled, and while her right eye was yellow like normal, her left was blue as the sky.
"I know!" the girl with the one blue eye shot her hand up.
Ahmi held a sprig of some dried herb in her hand. "I know you know. Talía?"
The Goloagi girl took a nervous breath and stared at the thing. "Uh…" She hemmed and hawed and scoured her mind for the answer. "feðasi?"
"Close. Dayumi?"
Dayumi snapped her attention from wherever the hell it had wandered off to and she looked at the sprig. "I don't know what it's called, but if you chew on it you'll shit for days."
Talía fought off a giggle. The blue-eyed girl shook her head contemptuously while I found an upturned bucket to sit down on.
"It is good that you know that we use it for constipation," Ahmi nodded. "ɣʊŋi?"
The girl with the one blue eye beamed with pride. "It's called pepo'a. It's an annual, the seeds are toxic so you should never harvest it during dry season, and the dried herb stays potent for years."
"Very good!"
"Mother in Heaven, what is this?" Dayumi picked up some brown sponge-looking thing from another pot and held it close to her nose. She shoved it in Talía's face. "Smell this!"
The runaway slave reluctantly smelled the thing, then her eyes popped and she picked one up, squeezing the brown thing in her fingers and smelling it some more. "What is this?"
"It is called you were assigned reading material in my absence."
Dayumi rounded the table towards me. "Here, smell this!"
It was like some sweet, camphorous perfume that stayed in my nostrils long after Dayumi pulled it away to smell it again.
"Ghuni?"
The girl with the blue left eye raised her chin high. "ɣasefi mushroom is the principal ingredient in antivenins used to counteract muscle-seizure toxins, such as green rock viper, red rock viper, yellow rock viper, rorschach spider, and dayu toad!"
"Excellent!" Ahmi nodded. "Now Dayumi, where is it found?"
Dayumi shrugged. "I found it in that pot right there."
While Ahmi glared at her student, the runaway shot her hand up. "Wait! I know this one!"
"Talía?"
"It grows near the root of the pæmeto bush."
I couldn't help it. "What's a pæmeto bush?"
They all looked at me. Before anyone else could speak, Ghuni answered. "It has blue, sawblade-like palm leaves, and has a thick root like a tree trunk that grows along the ground."
Dayumi shrugged. "She's cheating."
"I am not!" Ghuni looked incredulously at her classmate, her mismatched eyes wide in offense.
"Yeah she is."
"I am not!" Ghuni cried. "Do you see books or notes or anything? I don't have anything!"
"She's still cheating."
"You don't have to answer that." Ahmi rested her hand on Ghuni's arm. "Now. ɣʊŋi, Talía, I want you to meet Caleb Jungle-Tested who is now called Sewa'a Nea Ane. He is here because he has been assigned a new team of soldiers that he was not expecting, and would like a sekɪwa to help train them."
I furrowed my brow at her. "How did you.."
She grinned. "How many days does she give us?"
"Two."
Ahmi grinned and looked over her students, all three of whom were just about old enough. "Perfect!"