26 - First assignment

Mana, Nyera and Ramiha Ketariha, Krero’s new girlfriend, were, like me, not yet sixteen; but they had been judged ready to receive their wristlets, and so we were all sent together to Hurai’s army.

Our Ten was them, Krero, Sachara, Kamina Shae-Buraina, who was brilliant with a sword but had had to overcome fear, Alaecha Nikari, whom I hardly knew, Kunarda Nung-Shae-Zen, who had joined the School of the Sword in spring, and myself. Kunarda was a dark bristling boy with long black locks that hung nearly as straight as an Enchian’s; his first training was fighting off taunts about his hair. Those who think I was the strongest man in all Yeola-e or the world should know, he could finger-wrestle me to the ground, beat me in arm-wrestling with either arm and outrun me in a short race all my life.

Of the youngest students of the School of the Sword who were old enough to go, we were the best, and most would say it is the best school in Yeola-e. So we knew we’d all be elite-rank when we were full-grown, assuming we lived until then. But we would start fighting among the regulars, and see how that went. Like anyone else, we’d have to make our own names.

Our dekakraseye was Kesariga Asenga, a man old enough to have patrolled on the border but not to have fought in the Enchian wars. I felt sorry for him, stuck with both me with my position and Krero with his nature. “You know, he’s not even blooded,” the grumbles were, on the march. “The moment we get there, I want to impeach him, and elect you.” I felt flattered, but just said, “I wouldn’t accept it, not without him doing something that proves him unworthy.” The tradition is always, of course, that the anaraseye or semanakraseye starts at common rank, so Kesariga wouldn't even appoint me his second, giving it to Krero instead.

Still, I got called on to do what the commander should, because Kesariga couldn’t, in the dark of night when we were tired from marching and then setting up camp and they’d find themselves not feeling so brave against what we were marching toward. “Chevenga,” Mana whispered to me when he and I were visiting the latrine one night, “you’re the only one who knows… what’s it really like to stick a sword into someone? And have them trying to stick a sword in you?” When the third person asked me, I decided we should all talk about it together around the fire.

“You’ve been told this by any number of war-teachers and you can’t really know it until you do it,” I said, taking my crystal in my hand, “but in case you trust me more than all of them, I’ll swear on it second Fire come: everything you learned in your war-training was right and will work.” How this could be news I had no idea, but they all heaved a sigh of relief.

“What it’s like…” Even if I was our best expert, I wasn’t much of one; for one thing, it had happened when I had been young enough to think and feel very differently from how I did now. What it’s like to do it the first time when you are fifteen or sixteen, I cannot ever know. I’d just have to do my best. “It’s… easier than you think. You stick it in and what happens is… what’s supposed to. If you get an artery there’s a lot of blood, it’s amazing how much.”

“Oh, I am so going to get the pukes,” said Kamina. “My mama told me that you do at first, but then you get used to it.” There were chalk signs all around. “My dad says you’re not a real warrior until you can eat dinner downwind from yesterday’s battlefield on a hot day, and still enjoy it,” said Ramiha. A chorus of ‘eww’s’ went all around the fire.

“Cheng, what’s it feel like to watch someone die who you killed?” Sachara, ever good at getting to the true heart of matters.

“Well… I don’t really know,” I said. “I didn’t stand there and watch; each time, there was something else I had to pay attention to.” If it hadn’t been the next Lakan, it had been someone in my month-family I’d been talking to. “I just looked long enough to know—you know how you’re supposed to assess whether they can still fight you? I just did it without thinking, it was instinctive. Definition of victory, remember?” We all had it etched on our minds: making it certain that the enemy will no longer fight you. “Which is good, I guess; I think they’d prefer to die without their killer watching.”

“It’s not for us to give a shit what they prefer,” Kesariga spat. “They’re the enemy.” I said nothing to that; he was right, of course.

“How scary is it, seeing them looking at you planning to kill you and knowing you might die?” said Alaecha.

I am so much the wrong person to ask that, I thought, drawing breath to answer and hoping something coherent came out anyway; to my amazement, Krero saved me. “It’s Chevenga,” he said, pointing his thumb at me. “He can’t give us an idea of how it will be for us, who are just ordinary; he doesn’t know fear.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “I was scared part of the time… it went on and off. Maybe because I was so young. The first was the worst; he was coming at me and all of a sudden I forgot all my war-training, it all went out of my head. But—and you’ve got to remember this, in case it happens to you—it’s still there… you just have to start not thinking. It’s all in your hands and your body, from all that practice. If you just… let it happen… at least that’s how it was for me.”

“And it might not be the same for everyone, or anyone, else,” cautioned Kesariga. I got the feeling he felt shown up by me, and I knew that his confidence being shaken could be the worst thing for us on the field, even costing lives. So I told them all, “I can’t really say much more, because you can’t really know what it is until you do it anyway,” changed the subject, and stayed away from doing anything that is typically the commander’s part for the rest of the trip, except answering the questions privately.

It was midmorning when we came to Shairao. It commands a pass above a wide valley. It’s not walled—no foreigners had ever won so deep into these parts before—though the inhabitants were quickly changing that, working night and day. The talk was that if the Lakans had a lick of sense they’d attack before it was much higher. We were camped near the top of the pass road, beside the town; the Lakans were camped on the valley floor, too far away to see as more than a dark motley mass that drew the eyes of us newbies irresistibly.

I cannot forget my first taste of the life I would live so much: the guy-ropes and trampled grass, fire-pits and latrine-pots; smells of sweat, canvas, smoke, potatoes, mutton stew; the rasp of sharpening stones on steel and the ring of axes in wood; the horseplay, training yells, comings, goings, messages, errands, swear-words; the sense in the air of multitude, full of a single purpose.

A town is placid, going about its business unconcerned with its existence, since it is a thing that should be. A war camp, being a thing that should not be and hence ever full of concern, breathes its news and its spirit, good or bad, into the air, showing it in every stance and voice, the bearing of every shoulder and the sheen of every wristlet.

Here, it was, “We’re being defeated.” Every face but those of newcomers had a grim set, and one could hear people curse each other; everywhere were bandages and crutches, too, and faces pale with wounds hidden under clothing.

We reported to our milakraseye and I reported to Hurai, as I would begin my general’s apprenticeship, too. The squire who showed me to his quarters was a girl of fourteen or so, silent as stone. Thinking we both needed some laughter, I teased her for conversation. She stayed dour, and mentioned losing all her family. I must have looked an idiot, staring. Innocence always dies in silence. She just said, “I’m from Nikyana.”

Hurai was in front of his tent with a scrivener, a runner and two hovering squires. I had never met him except perhaps when I’d been too small to remember, and knew him only by the signs of the circle on his collar and arm rings. He was a big man, just past forty, tall and thick and spear-straight, with a short brush of tight red-brown curls, thinning on the crown.

“Yes,” he was saying to the scrivener, who worked, I saw by the quill tattoo on her arm, with the Workfast Proclamatory. “It was necessary to retreat. The piss-drinker would have cut us to shreds! And when was your wisdom requested anyway? I thought you were requesting my information.” When she was done, I stepped forward. “Samo, get me some water,” Hurai snapped. “Perha, go count tent-pegs. Everyone else go away unless it’s important; I have to think before a war counsel, curse it! What in the Garden Orbicular do you want, boy?”

I saluted, and introduced myself. “Ah,” he said, saluting in return, then gave me the once-over. “Black hair and Chirel on the shoulder, sure enough; you even look a bit like your dad if I squint. Too slight to be an impostor; he’d never think he could portray such a dreaded warrior. The famous Fourth Chevenga, killer of five Lakans at thirteen, born possessor of weapon-sense, combat genius and master of the principles of strategy: just the person we need.” I decided to smile eagerly at that. Sometimes I can’t believe how naïve I once was.

“Well, then, famous Fourth Chevenga, I have your first assignment, right now. Come.” I followed him past the tents, onto a path that led up the mountain. Here the view was broad, our camp and the town laid out below us, and the Lakans, far more distant, beyond the saddle of the green valley. “There they are and here we are. The land over the rise is talus here, fields there; the stream runs along there to there and can be forded everywhere, and over there is forest. We’ve lined from there to there with dung-sticks. We have two thousand pike-bearers, three thousand heavy-armed foot, twenty-five hundred light-armed, fifteen hundred archers, and horse you can’t call much more than a handful. They have eight thousand heavy-armed foot, three thousand light-armed, two thousand archers, and a thousand horse.

“General to general—you’ve heard all about Inkrajen and what he’s done, he’s as tricky as a snake both planning and in the field, curse his brown guts, and his adversary is… you, whom you presumably know. Their larder is full, and so is ours. We fought them yesterday, had to fall back fighting and lost a thousand. You can hear, probably better than I, how our morale is. Anything else you want to know, you can ask.

“I want one brilliant battle plan, as comprehensive and detailed as you should have to give if you were me, practicable and inspired in all its aspects, overlooking nothing, sure beyond a doubt to bring us a massive victory at negligible cost—in short, an example of perfection in the strategic art—and I want it by the time the sun is one fist over that crag tomorrow. Dismissed.”