032 - One stroke

Winter came, an early and cold one, the local people said, but a far worse curse to the Lakans than to us, who were billeted in a friendly town.

We went on growing up; war doesn’t stop that. When I became semanakraseye and chakrachaseye, if I went to war, by custom I would visit a different campfire every night, and deny no Yeoli who wanted me; it’s a way of binding the army as one. An anaraseye need not feel so obliged, but practice was good.

I spent more of that winter shopping for books than I’d have expected in war. When I’d showed Inkrajen’s copy of Shae-Frisena’s Greatest of Our Battles to Hurai and then the command council as a whole, I was so certain they’d drop everything to find every Lakan book on generalship they could get their hands on, I said nothing to suggest it. To my astonishment they did not, and shrugged it off when I did say something. “Isn’t that the key to how he was defeating us?” I asked them.

“Victories are generally attained with steel, not paper,” Emao-e said, to which everyone else laughed. In a smoldering silence, I remembered their ages. Cursed grown-ups, so hidebound and stone-minded and set in their ways; I started to swear I’d never get like that, when it occurred to me I probably wouldn’t live long enough to.

I wanted those books. I went to Hurai afterwards, since of course I didn’t have the money, made a more passionate argument—I tended to see eye-to-eye with him more than with Emao-e or most of the others—and got allotted a sum. The generals would take note, I knew, once I brought what I learned into our councils.

So I took leaves of absence to prowl through bookshops in larger towns, and sent operatives even further afield. Over the winter I got all the major works that had been translated into Enchian, including one by Inkrajen himself, The Principle of Deception. I’d study by lamp or firelight while my friends played knucklebones, made rude noises with their armpits and teased me for not leaving school at home as they all had.

Some two moons after the solstice, three hundreds under Lurai Roranyel seized a Lakan caravan carrying a moon’s supply of food to Nikyana, whole, by sweeping down on skis. The Lakans there had been relying on receiving it.

In twenty days, their sentries were leaning on their spears as they stood, weak for want of food. Then plague struck them, the disease of thirst, for which you must be given huge amounts of water. All day one could see them scraping snow from the earth around the town to melt; when they had to come further out we’d raid them. The last of our spies to leave their camp brought the news that without enough healthy arms to cut the needed wood the corpses could not be cremated; so the living had had to heap them in alleyways until spring thawed the ground enough to bury them. Spring came slow that year. Their number was halved, leaving six or seven thousand to our twelve, which for all they knew was eighteen; as well they were weak, despairing and facing starvation, and had little hope of relief, their king having turned his attention south.

We need do no more than surround them so to make sure no supplies got to them, demand their surrender, and if they refused, wait. Hurai made me think of this as a lesson; stuck in thoughts of siege and battle, perhaps from reading too much about it, I took a while to come to it, while he led me all over by the nose with deceptions. “An enemy general will do the same, and crush you as fast as he can,” I remember him saying as I stood shaking with frustration at myself. “When you’re semanakraseye, I won’t be there to give you hints.” Oh yes you will, I thought; you think I’m such an idiot as to not have you in my command council? We broke camp, and closed our ring around Nikyana.

After six days, a Lakan herald waved a bare ivy branch, and a party rode out. They were different now than in autumn, horses and men both gaunt beneath their bright panoply, their steps slow and weak, their proud bearing straining; grief, that had been fresh and spiced with anger in fall, was now worn deep into their brown faces. I noticed Inkrajen’s son was not there; I heard later that he’d succumbed to the plague. We would never have our fair fight.

The glow of triumph faded from my heart. The fighting done, they were enemies no longer, but fellow humans, starved, sick, bereaved, broken, with no choice but to give themselves into our hands, and accept what that brought them.

Some say we Yeolis are barbarians, for thumbing. But we have reason, fighting against slave-holding countries. If they capture us, they sell us into slavery, thus ensuring we do not fight again. If we capture them, we have no such means; so we let them go, but first make sure in our way. Sometimes there are mercy agreements, but there were none in this war.

I felt most for Orbukjen, whose face wore the shadow of illness. What his fate would be in Laka, I did not know. Here we impeach failing generals; there, all is subject to the king’s whim. He could make a defense of circumstance, and bad luck; yet everyone knew it all would have been very different had Inkrajen lived. I remember the reins trembling in his satin-gloved hands, as his herald went through the ubiquitous formalities, whose pomposity rang so discordant now; but he was steady, as he handed Hurai his sword, and cut off a thick lock of his hair with his dagger.

The plague had mostly run its course, but many Lakans still lay sick. We took the walls, but Hurai forbade us to enter the town so we wouldn’t catch it. You could see them when they came out into the streets, the faces of the camp-followers and servants, who in the way of Lakans had gone hungriest, looking like brown death’s heads, their clothes hanging like sacks on their bodies. We waited until all the sick had recovered or died, a half-moon, sharing our rations with them.

When the sun was well up on that day, meltwater dripping silver from the dark eaves of the houses—how the Lakans must have cursed to see spring come, a moon too late—we gathered them in the square, where the two blocks and the brazier for the cauterizing-irons were set up. The trained warriors were separated from the serfs; even now when one would think they’d want to hide it, all but a few still wore their insignia of warriorhood, the spear-head shaped earrings. Now I learned the old trick for catching the rest, of having someone strike a Yeoli war gong behind them, then picking out the ones who spin around into stance unthinking.

Orbukjen we could ransom, and therefore we were not planning to thumb him; but when all was ready, he left Hurai’s side to go to the head of the line. Not much on wit, at least he had courage and fair-mindedness. He bore it with grace, too, his chin high and steady all though. In the throng of brown faces many cheeks glistened in the sun with tears. Then the line began to move, and soon the air was thick with the smell of burned flesh.

Though I had got used to battle, I felt sick: I think it was that it was done in such an orderly way, like in an infirmary, or that there was no fight in it, like a slaughterhouse. My stomach was most turned, somehow, by the way the hatchet-worker would clear the block with his hatchet after each blow like a cook discarding rind, as if what he added to the brown heap beside it had never been part of a person. Of course I did the same, in my own turn. By custom, I had to take a turn in every position in the thumbing-crew. The hands come fast, and you think only of the ten lashes you will get if you don’t bring the blade down hard enough, that being the standard punishment for taking more than one blow to do it. It was seeing them tear their spear-earrings from their ears afterwards with their shield-hands, equivalent to Yeolis flinging away their wristlets, that most struck my heart.

Using the iron, at least you can tell yourself you are a healer, stanching their bleeding even as they flinch or scream. Asking their choice, thumbing or death, is worse than it looks; you have to see their faces. Looking for tricks is part of that. A shield-handed man, we caught out by the wear-mark of his scabbard-strap on his belt. He wept like a child, unlike the others; unlike the others, he had nursed hope.

Then came a middle-aged man with long hair-earrings, who was the first to answer my question by drawing a finger across his throat. I tried to dissuade him, with gestures and in Enchian. He stared at me astonished; then he drew himself up. I had never seen such a look, immutable as a cliff-face and pure as diamond in its contempt, knowing as much of humility or uncertainty as gold knows tarnish; the disdain, through this one man’s black eyes, of a hundred generations of Lakan nobles. “Stop your mouth, boy,” he said, in thick-Lakan-accented Enchian.

I understood. He’d made peace with death; the pride which required him to die rather than return home thumbless was all he had left. I had tried to take that from him. It struck me that I was seeing the God-In-Him, even if he worshipped many-armed idols. I said “Sorry,” and he turned away and strode to the death-block. The guards moved to seize his arms, and before I knew it, my hands were on their shoulders and I was ordering them off him, though I had no authority to. The Lakan looked at me as if to say, “Perhaps I thought too harshly of you.” Then Hurai said “Chevenga,” and gestured to the death-block, and the beheading-axe leaned up against it.

I had to have a turn at every position. He was thinking either to let me get over it fast, or that there might not be another Lakan who chose this way. “One stroke or twenty lashes, lad. It won’t make much difference to him, but it will to the other Lakans.”

All I will say is, the Lakan lord laid his head down without hesitation, and I did it in one stroke. I could never be an executioner. I still sometimes feel it, hefting that so-easily lethal weight, feeling the edge catch for the shade of an instant on a nub of bone before it thumped into the block, in my nightmares.

We sent all but those we ransomed over Kamis, and claimed, as is our custom, a Lakan valley large enough to feed all those lost on this front in this war. Foreign scholars ask us how, if we were never the aggressors, Yeola-e acquired land from other nations. It was all gained this way, when we could, every fingerwidth the compensation for lives lost, which can never be regained. We take no more than has been taken from us, nor do we always win, but we’ve had a long time, one and a half millennia.

Tyeraha summoned Hurai to Leyere, and me with him, my ten among his guard. By then I’d read in a Lakan military history about a tribe to the northwest of Laka, the Kadril, who had countered the Lakan horse better than anyone else, the author wrote, by using three-man-height-long pikes with their butts set in the ground. The first five or six ranks of points extended beyond the first rank of warriors, who were in very close order lending the whole formation, which was fifteen ranks deep, great weight.

I pushed the idea to Tyeraha, Hurai and Emao-e, and since we’d come up with nothing else that worked well, they decided to try it. A call was put out among the spear and pike units for a milakraseye with a thousand who’d try it first. Curious to meet the one who would, I went to where they were drilling the first day.

The mila was a tall, lanky man in his early twenties, with a shock of dark hair that could be described as wavy at best, and skin that tanned darker than most Yeolis, making me think he might be part Lakan. He had no trace of an accent other than local Yeoli though, and a very erudite way of speaking. When I greeted him and introduced myself, saying I was interested in what he was doing, he said, “Well, that works out nicely, anaraseye, because so am I. Michela Thefora-e, of Leyere, at your service.”

“If I call you by your name, you must call me by mine, kras’,” I said. “I’m curious; you were the first—or only?—mila who came forward; why?”

“Well, Fourth Chevenga, since I may,” he said, “I thought, ‘I’m pretty good with a spear, as are all my people—wait! Long spear? Like the Kadri tribe in that book I read last year?’”

“You read that book too?” I’d started to think no other Yeoli would unless I hit him over the head with it a few times.

“When you’re interested in command, you read every book on general-craft you can find. It was in the local library, in the Lakan section.” Leyere has switched hands between Laka and Yeola-e a good six times in the last three centuries. “When I mentioned I had it to Hurai, he gave me the assignment, just like that.” Well, I thought. Perhaps they are more welcoming to my ideas than they let on. At the same time, I was telling myself to remember his name, running it over in my head several times.

“Wait, wait,” I said, my mind snagging on some of his words. “Did you say the Lakan section?”

“A Lakan general wrote the book; why wouldn’t it be in Lakan?” He’d read the original.

“You have it here? But you said it was in the library…?”

“Well, you see who’s holding the city now. I, em, liberated a few volumes. I am hoping they spare me the overdue fine...”

“We’re going to compare! I’ll be back!” Translations sometimes do not do the originals justice. I went at a dead run to my tent and my library, and back, while Krero, Sach and Mana stayed talking with him. When I was back we sat together with the books side-by-side, his silk-and-linen-bound in the Lakan style, mine bound with crossing veneer in the Enchian style.

“You say if you’re interested in command you read every book you can get your hands on, but not everyone who’s interested in command does that,” I said as I opened it to the chapter.

“Then not everyone who’s interested in command will be any good at it. That stands to reason; we’ve all had idiot commanders.”

Happy that I had mentioned no names, I changed the subject. “I’m sorry, I forgot to say, congratulations on getting the assignment. I’m glad it was you. Were you always bookish?”

“Oh yes. My mother swears my first words were ones I read aloud, though I’m not sure I actually believe that. But I’ve never seen somebody up and decide to become bookish, and then actually do it.”

“I did it,” I said. “I’m not bookish by nature.” I told him about finding Shae-Frisena’s Greatest of Our Battles in Inkrajen’s tent, and what it had spurred me to do.

“Good on you for bettering yourself,” he said. “That drive will make you a good chakrachaseye, if you keep it up.”

“I didn’t do it to be a good chakrachakraseye.” I found the chapter. “I did it to save Yeoli lives.”

“Same thing, right?”

There are some commanders who fight from the heart and the mind both, and others who fight just from the mind, as if it is all purely a game that intrigues them. Michela, I saw, was the latter. You want both, in your army; you give them different assignments.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Same page number? Can we go through it together? I can’t read any Lakan at all.” The wood-cut pictures were very much the same, well-copied.

Where his heart was, I saw, was things like finding out, to his outrage, that my version was missing parts. “What? They completely cut the section on fighting in unlevel terrain just because Enchian grammar makes for longer sentences? That’s insane!”

“You’re right,” I said. “Can you translate it for me? I mean, in writing? When you have time? Are there any other sections... well, we’ll get to them.”

“See this woodcut, and this one, that are consecutive in yours? The chapter between them is all about Kadril tactics in non-level terrain. The text explains this first diagram, which is kind of hard to understand without it.” I had been puzzling over that. “See, the weapons are so long they have to be made and moved in two pieces with a collar-and-stud arrangement to attach them—Hurai knew that, we had them made correctly. So here, see this? The bottom ends are stuck backward in the ground to make hedges to box the enemy cavalry into this ravine, and the other halves are waiting on the banks with a quarter of your force. They don’t make bad javelins. So the remaining three-quarters of the force engages the cavalry with front halves and short swords while they’re caught in the cross-fire…”

I felt my heart pounding, suddenly seeing endless possibilities in this. “That’s brilliant! There are all kinds of different things you could do!”

“Break’s done, lad, back to work. I’ll get you that translation in the next few days, so you can pass it on to Hurai, right?” He grinned conspiratorially, though I wasn’t sure why.

“Yes, and a copy for my own library, too.”

His brows drew down. “What am I, squad scrivener?”

“No no, sorry, kras,” I said. “I meant I’ll copy it. I’ll know it better that way anyway. You’ve given me so much, I don’t want to put you out more.”

He smacked me on the shoulder. “Good boy. Let’s chat again sometime, eh?”

I wanted to get my hands on one of these things before he dismissed me, though. “Michela… a person has to be tall enough to fight with these...” The Kadri tribe would build a three-stick structure like a doorway that was a certain height, and only if your head touched the top one could you fight in such a unit. “But there aren’t any rules about how big he has to be to drill with them, are there?”

“Lad, we haven’t even been in any engagements yet. There hasn’t been time to write any rules.”

I took that as a yes. Krero, Sachara and Mana closed in beside me. “Ohh no, no, no!” he spat. “You’ll try pole-vaulting or something and then I have to explain to Hurai how I let the anaraseye get a pike-head through his brain.” He was smiling, though. He was going to let us, and he knew it.

I grabbed my crystal. “No, we won’t! All-Spirit be my witness, second Fire come if we pole-vault.”

“Or something!” Mana added, holding his crystal also.

“We’ll do nothing but follow orders like we’re supposed to,” said Krero, gripping his.

“You’ve all been dogging me for the entire drill break. Doesn’t your setakraseye give you duties?”

“Yes but I begged off that for a general’s-apprenticeship duty,” I said. “Meaning, coming here. And they’re my escort. You know I’m apprenticed to Hurai, right?”

“I’d heard, but I figured you’d still need to show up for inspections and latrine duty and the like. How else will you learn proper soldiering, which you will need to know to command proper soldiers? ”

“I have to do both, Michela,” I said. “So I get to sleep less. Your people are lazing around right now... are we drilling or what?”

He called over a woman who was no less tall than he was, who had a face like leather, though she was young, and a body that flexed like the kind of steel Chirel was made of. “Taina! Kick these noisome boys’ butts for me, will you? Assembly, disassembly, present arms…” He grinned wickedly. “…at full extension. The rest of you, form up for hedgehog!”

Not a quarter into the drill, I thought my arms were tearing apart. Present arms at full extension, it turned out, meant going into stance holding the long spear leveled straight out in front. Easy with a man-length spear, but these were three times man-length, and they also had long points, spars of obsidian. “Whoever drops his point does two hundred push-ups,” she said relishingly, and made us just stand there until our muscles were screaming, sweat pouring down our faces, hands trembling, eyes burning, minds feeling as if it were the end of the world until realization came that it was not and we had more strength than we knew. We all dropped our points, at one time or another; we all did two hundred pushups, at least. As we staggered away ready to drop, she said tersely, “Good spirit, all of you.” It was like receiving a high commendation.

Hat tip to Michael S.S. Thedford for the creation of Michela, my second true reader character (the first is Veresinga Shae-Rusha, whom you will meet later; Michela was created retroactively. The third is Klara Milera, whom you will also meet later.)