25 - Steeled all around with armour

Komona Shae-Ranga-e, who had said she would not marry me because her egg was falling three years before, was also in Brahvniki, on a Senaheri month-away. Between our monk’s tasks, something began between us.

She was the first person to whom I cried in bed, “I give myself to you!” and “Your touch is my life!”, to my own surprise; she had a manner that inspired—no, obliged—trust. Of course, youths of that age will yell that the Earthsphere is moving in their throes of ecstasy; but never have I uttered any such thing that I did not feel just as wholeheartedly afterward.

It was her philosophical bent that drew me to her, I suppose; it was certainly not the camaraderie of the ground, as with Nyera. We couldn’t wrestle; the one time I tried, she cried afterwards, “You bruised me!” I was sure that every friend of mine would say, “You two are so unwell-matched.” And yet something in each of us allowed a harmony between us that I’d never had with anyone else. The idea of being with her for the rest of my life made me light-headed with joy, when I dared imagine it.

Then my month away was cut off. Yeola-e was at war.

My guards woke me at midnight, and we set sail right then, leaving our ambassador to make my farewells and apologies for me. The news was that Lakans had taken the pass at Kamis and had laid siege to Nikyana, the closest way into our plains, and to Leyere, far to the south. Astyardk wanted more, it seemed, than one fertile valley.

I remember the sea in the first paling of dawn, smooth as an Arkan mirror reflecting the flowering hues of the sky, except where our oar-blades cut through its skin to show the deep turquoise of its flesh hidden underneath. I stood by the rail, stunned and concerned for Yeola-e, and grieving, for myself. Komona was not a warrior. I would be sent straight to my posting. Until the war ended, years perhaps, I would not see her again.

That was not, after all, how it went. When we got to the Hearthstone, and I went into Tyeraha’s office full-geared, she said, “You’ll cut a fine figure, when your time comes to go.” By custom I should go on the first tour, then stay for my general’s apprenticeship; but there is another custom, whereby a warrior-semanakraseye or anaraseye who is greatly gifted or has some uncommon ability, marries, if not married already, and produces one heir before going to war, so as to pass it down. It had never crossed my mind that I qualified, though it should have. “Whatever’s in your blood,” I remember her saying, “is good soup-base for the next. “ It is not done if it will keep us away too long; it is only hedging a bet, after all. But Tyeraha had her spies, felt I stood a chance of marrying Komona, and Assembly had chalked it by a fair majority.

I argued passionately, of course, as one will as a matter of duty when part of one’s inclinations are secretly opposed. Nearly three years in wristlets had not changed me; I would have given anything never to fight in my life, but my people’s lives. But I could imagine how others would see me, cooling my heels in the Hearthstone while people died in Nikyana, and I feared being called a coward. I asked my aunt to somehow take it back before Assembly, but she just kept signing charcoal. “A warrior’s honour doesn’t always suit a semanakraseye; only a semanakraseye’s does,” she said.

The signs of war were everywhere, the gate-guards all either younger or older than their twenties, no one playing Unsword in the courtyard. My sibs kept saying, “Cheng, aren’t you going? When are you going? Will you come back?” The news kept coming. The wall across Kamis had been taken by surprise; they’d sent mountaineers (how should we have known they had them?) to climb around behind and open the gate. “There is a name you should know,” my mother told me: “Inkrajen.” That was the Lakan general who had conceived it.

In Leyere, it had been planting when the sentinels had lit the fire of warning, so no crops would come in this year. Yet the city, having been sacked before, has a vegetable patch and a cistern on every roof. Likely they could hold out alone until winter, when the Lakans—twenty-thousand, apparently—would have to retreat or ease off, so we could send most of our strength against Inkrajen.

The first warriors of Vae Arahi to be sent had left for Nikyana seven days before I got home. Esora-e and Denaina were not yet posted, nor were my friends.

Tyeraha was war-trained, but no general, and so had appointed Hurai Kadari to command; she would stay here unless war came far inland, which a certain young augurer of excellent promise who had just joined the Assembly Palace Workfast, one Jinai Oru, had said it would not.

Azaila, missing a good half of his Teachers, set me to instructing, with students who were taller than I to a person. I was still child enough to whine about this, until he drew me aside after class, and stood close, saying no words, only smiling. I was looking down at him, by a good three fingerwidths.

Leyere held, the twenty thousand Lakans dwindling to ten thousand in attacking us. It was Emao-e Lazaila, called Steel-eyes, commanding the relief force; she was able to drive the besiegers off to bring in supplies. But Nikyana fell.

Once again Inkrajen was our curse. Laka always has its cavalry, made up of those great black warhorses and the slave-owning lords that breed them, riding with their henchmen. Our watchers had spied only a few in his army. But near the town is a small plain, that had been harvested already, and Inkrajen lured us (under Korotora Shae-Serao) there, then attacked just before dawn on a moonless night. From nowhere came a thousand horsemen, to cut us to pieces. He’d sneaked them over the pass with covered lanterns and muffled hooves in the night. We lost three thousand, including Tyirao Krai, who had taught me the shoulder-draw, and Checharao Sachil, whom I had sought for love once at twelve. Our army was scattered, the town walls stormed, and everyone within chained and marched away to Lakan slave-blocks or kept there to slave for their army. On Nikyana’s burgeoning stores, so carefully laid in in case of siege, Inkrajen’s army could winter on our land.

“You think you could have made things happen any differently, single-handed?” my aunt asked me, when I told her I should have been there. “You might have got killed too.” You don’t know how it is to be a warrior, I thought.

Komona came home, and was surprised to see me still in Vae Arahi. I had not written her since; I’d have to explain why it was from Vae Arahi, and a man can’t drop a more obvious marriage hint than that. I was afraid that if I did, she might propose by letter, and I’d have to write back neither yes nor no but with some lie for an excuse. I absolutely would not commit my secret to paper.

Now she was here, though. “Who did you say think we might be meaning to get married?” she asked me. “Assembly?” The danger of avoiding women of a legal or political bent: other women didn’t always see right away what they were getting into, tying themselves to me.

“Well…!” She let out one of the long rippling laughs that had helped me fall in love with her. “I… well… we’ve only… I’m not asking you, em, yet.” My heart felt as if it would fall out of my chest in relief.

Summer ripened; the crops looked to be the best in ten years, as even we Athyel will thank the Hermaphrodite for, in times of war. Krero turned sixteen and got his wristlets, then Sachara, with the rest of us following hard on their heels. When I was done training and work, Komona and I would lie together in the meadows, twining flowers in each other’s hair, and playing debating games.

I remember how the moment came. She had got the better of me; losing sorely, I said, “Politics is built on dialectic, philosophy defies it. So there.” She kissed my nose, and said, “Concession accepted, beautiful one. You know, love, my mother always told me to marry someone I could out-argue.”

It was time. I remember drawing my hands out of hers to say it, once I’d sworn her to silence, having decided I should always do that.

Like Nyera, Komona found my mysteries explained. She took it more calmly, though, telling me she must do a seven-day abstinence in the Shrine to decide.

All through that seven days, I tried to stay away from the Shrine. I almost did. I remember kissing her crystal, as it hung from the branch of the tree in which she was sitting.

A Senahera wants peace of mind in life. Their lives are about that. It would have been hard enough, married to a semanakraseye, without this. Like Nyera, she was bitterly apologetic, and as with Nyera, I told her not to be, that I understood.

I didn’t find it out right away, but sometime in the next few days she swore an oath to stay celibate for life. Not by her natural inclinations; no one knew that better than I. I wanted to speak to her about it, to tell her she shouldn’t do such a thing for my sake, she was being far too harsh to herself, and so on. But she would not see me, saying only she was in too much pain.

There is nothing but blackness in the world, I thought. For her, for me; her life would have been a thousand times happier if I had never existed. How many other people will that be true for, in the end? A day or two later I lay in bed past dawn, following the running patterns on my ceiling. My body saw no reason in the world to rise. In time my door sprang open, and my shadow-father came in, dressed for training, his face full of worry. “Saint Mother!” he said when he looked into my face. “You don’t look sick. Are you?”

I just said, “Go away.”

Were a child of mine to do this, I think I would say, “Very well, it’s your own training you are losing,” give his and my students to another Teacher, and not leave him alone until I knew the reason. But Esora-e and I are different fathers.

“If you aren’t dressed in a count of ten,” he said, “you’ll get the combing—no, the thrashing, you’re a warrior, you got the last combing in your life for not running in Krisae—the combing of your life. One…”

“I didn’t invite you into my room,” I said. “Get out.” He stared disbelieving for the length of a heartbeat; then he leaned down to throw my covers off, intending to yank me up by the hair, I think. Before he could I hurled myself at him.

We crashed backward over my desk, sending my waxboard and my amethyst paperweight flying, and bringing down a rain of papers. I threw him, but he wrapped his legs around me and twisted our fall so that he landed on top; on my sheepskin he kept his weight on me, then when I was fighting hardest to turn onto my front he let me, twisted my arm behind my back in its moment of laxness, and turned me prone again with my both arms pinned, and one of his free.

We locked eyes. His were blank with rage; mine must have shown no fear, for I felt none, only an anger as dead as a stone blade. He drew his arm back, and struck me full in the temple, using less than his full strength, else he probably would have killed me, but hitting with the edge of his wristlet. I saw flowers of purple and black for a moment on that side, and my ears rang. But I kept my eyes on his, and he drew his arm back again.

I am not sure how many times he did it. His intention was to drive the defiance out of my stare, which he eventually did, because I lost my ability to keep my eyes on him. The walls loosed themselves from their moorings in the floor, and started spinning all around my head. The floor seemed to heave, bile rushed to my throat and I vomited until I was empty. Then I lay still, that being all I could do.

“When you are recovered,” he said, standing over me, “I shall see you on the training ground.” While we fought his hands had been steady as stone; it was now they trembled, as he knelt to kiss my brow. Somehow, that was the worst cruelty. He only loves me, I thought as he left, closing my door gently behind him, when I am defeated. Death seemed preferable again, and I knew where. Close enough to the place of testing is a place wide enough in the stream to cover a youth. A little late, I thought, but my pyre will still be andirons, since I am still a child.

I dragged myself staggering up the mountain to the stream. In a bath of rushing ice-water I lay still, watching a hawk wheel in the steel sky; my skin scalded, silvery, like in the swimming hole in spring. Cold reminds one of one’s fragility, as anyone who has leapt into a glacial lake will know; it crept deeper than my skin, burning the fire out of my heart. A headache beyond description came; I began shivering, and knew I would not die until after it stopped.

But my mind, being alive still, must think thoughts; there being no reason to think about anything to do with life, since I was done with it, I could think nothing but “Well, then. I’m about to die.” Soon I noticed I must turn my mind from everything which was anything to me, since I was about to leave it all. Then it was only a matter of time before I thought, “This is insane!”, got up, and staggered back down the mountain to my mother’s room, where the fire always burned, fearing I’d caught my death.

I didn’t want a Haian, but my mother sent for one anyway. I don’t know what the Haian said to my parents, but the next day Esora-e apologized, with the deepest contrition, and I apologized to him for my part. In explanation, I said only, “It was madness.” For him that would answer questions, not raise them.

When I was fully healed, I geared up again. I would get a breastplate when I was semanakraseye, my father’s if it fit me; now I had a long chain mail shirt, belted above the hips, that could be widened as I filled out, and his steel helm. I said farewell to my room, in which I had lived all my life. On the long tapestry that hangs in the stairwell are woven the Twin Hawks, whom foreigners call gods, and warriors call the Oldest Lovers (since how can two face each other for so long and not fight, except that they are lovers?), a sign of war left over from before the Fire. They stare, never fight; though they stood locked in threat for a century, the fight lasted only a moment, and then the world was ashes, so great was the power of their weapons, or so the story goes.

My heart as well as my shoulders felt steeled all around with armour. I felt ready to shred Lakans. “No reason now,” I said to my aunt, “why I shouldn’t go.”