38 - The gate of Kantila

I went back to Kantila with my aunt’s yes-but-not-alone authorization. That led to a problem I’d handily avoided with Inkrajen, acting alone: this action should be undertaken by the most experienced and accomplished darkwork-trained elite warriors we had. How much would such people want to undertake such a mission with someone of an age to be an apprentice at best, let alone be led by him?

I’d thought I had a darkwork record. “That I assassinated Inkrajen means nothing to them?” I asked Emao-e.

“Fourth Chevenga, it’s been trouble enough as it is, sending you on this.” (She’d apparently forgotten it was my idea.) “You will have to talk to them, and pass whatever tests they want to see you pass, and convince them.”

So it was that I was introduced that night to nine entirely non-descript but muscular people who, of course, I will not name, not that it was likely the names they gave me were real. I wasn’t sure, it not being necessary for me to know, who worked for Ikal and who didn’t, or who had had what darkwork training.

I dressed as I usually did then when not expecting battle, unarmoured but with Chirel, a shortsword and a dagger; this time also, though, I put all my award-pins on my collar, with the Serpent Incarnadine most prominent, and the brass mamoka next to it. (Emao-e had had them made for all four-hundred and fifty of us, to honour that action specifically. Incidentally, the captured mamokal had frustrated all our attempts to tame them, no doubt because we had no idea what we were doing, and so Emao-e was haggling with the Lakans for their ransom.)

If my comrades in darkwork gave me looks as if they thought I was trying too hard to impress, I’d just tell them the truth: “It’s not like I don’t know I’m only sixteen, and have to prove myself in every way I’ve got.”

They didn’t; I think, on retrospect, they understood. (At that age, like most people that age, I didn’t credit adults with as much wisdom as they actually had.) When she was presenting me to them, Emao-e didn’t tell them I’d be leading, but she also didn’t assign anyone else. I had to forge my own way with this too, it seemed.

I could have started giving orders right away, and slapped down with discipline whoever first challenged me, as I had with the hundred (there’s always one). Part of me certainly wanted to, and wondered whether my caution was cowardice. But the hundred had elected me, whereas I’d been thrust upon these nine.

So I just sat when they did—they’d all stood up around their fire to welcome me—like one of them, and said, “I know none of you know me except what you’ve heard, so ask me to tell you, and prove to you, what you will. We all have to know what all the rest can do.”

No surprise, one of the men stood up and said, “Chevenga, spar me.” I never knew him by any name other than Ilacha. How well they all knew each other from before, I wasn’t quite sure, but they had certainly been talking, and I sensed he’d been chosen. He wasn’t armed so I took off all my blades and my shirt.

Of course I didn’t need to win, only to make a good enough account of myself; always best to remember that in a situation like this, else thinking of winning will make you go too tight, especially if you start feeling you are losing. He was very good, like water and steel in the form of flesh, and brilliant with spinning moves, and I soon felt he could take me. He didn’t entirely pull when he got a blow through, either, wanting to know how well I took pain; next day I’d have a few bruises. I did my best; I’d have to trust that that good enough to win their confidence.

They gave me a bit of time to catch my breath, and then they wanted to see me sword-fight blindfolded, which I’d gotten better at since I’d been The Boy With Eyes in the Back of his Head. Then we played hide-and-seek, with me counting by the fire as It while they all spread out, quiet as moving shadows, into the woods, armed. They’d proposed just that I find them; I said, “I’ll try to murder you all too.” I got four out of nine, not bad considering that most of them had had years of training how to sense intent, though in one case it was a plain old twig snapping under my foot that betrayed me. They were happy, then, to put their heads together to plan with me.

“Emao-e didn’t name who’d lead us,” said a woman I know only as Raila. “Was she thinking you, Chevenga?” That put a glow in my heart; I’d convinced them it was possible.

Still, that didn’t convince them it was best. “Well,” I said after a glance around at all their faces, “opening the gate from within was my idea, based on what little I know from walking around the walls; but that doesn’t mean I have to lead. Might it be our good fortune that one or more of you are from Kantila?” Blessing of blessings, one of them, who I know only as Rao, was. I wanted to ask his story, but now wasn’t the time. “Let’s plan, and see if one of us comes out naturally as a leader; it will be whoever wins everyone else’s confidence the most by making the best considerations. And if it’s more than one, we put it to a vote.”

So we did, and I purposely didn’t try any harder than usual, for all I wanted to; all that would do was bring tightness of the mind. The first thing to do was a thorough reconnaissance of the outside of the wall; for the inside we’d have to rely on Rao’s memory, and my weapon-sense for where guards were placed. One very useful thing he told us: “It takes five to move each gate-bar.” No wonder Jinai had said I mustn’t try it alone. I imagined myself sweating and straining, swearing I’d die rather than fail, but in the end having to slink back over the wall defeated, while the army waited close to the gate, who knows how many of them dead to arrows—that is, if the Lakans didn’t kill me first, alerted by the grunts and gasps.

For the sake of Kantila, of course, I won’t reveal the weakness we found nor the precise plan we conceived. The taking of the lead seemed to split more or less evenly between Ilacha and me, so I decided (for all people who know me might find this unbelievable) to defer to him. “But you’re our weapon-sense eyes so you’re going to stay right with me,” he said. “And be second.” That was agreeable to all.

Same as infiltrating Emao-e’s tent, we used the cover of a driving rainstorm. It was much easier than killing Inkrajen, in truth, and not just because I had company. The sentries were too busy cursing their luck to have drawn wall duty on such a night to be properly alert, and of course no one was in the streets. The bars made enough of a scraping as we threw them that Lakans started yelling “Ahai!” from above, too late; a column of Yeolis came swarming dark out of the rain, roaring “Ai-yae-oh!” and throwing the gates wide, while we did the old trick of clinging to them as they swung so as to keep clear.

The Lakans never got in order or even properly armed; we cut down men in nightshirts, or naked, their skin shining wet in the rain. It was a slaughter from the start; before it could go far, they surrendered. The ten took no deaths and no wounds, and Emao-e gave us all the Serpent Incarnadine. Later the mayor-elect (since the Lakans had killed the previous mayor) also gave us all the Kantila key pin, saying with a laugh, “not that any of you need it.”

The next day, with Emao-e and her aides, I watched the sorting of those Lakans who would be ransomed, including Arzaktaj, and those who would be thumbed or killed, from the rest, who were about ten thousand. It came clear that among the Lakan reinforcements who’d been sent were thousands of peasants, re-equipped, whom we’d driven from Nikyana; King Astyardk was made of money, it seemed, at least when it came to this war. “Call the command council,” Emao-e ordered. “I want to discuss thumbing the whole kyashin lot of them, war-trained or not, so we don’t have to fight them again in Leyere.”

It should be explained, perhaps, why we don’t hold prisoners of war, at least in any numbers for any long time, even when it would give us an advantage. We are not a monarchy. If their keep is more than the war treasury can afford, it must go to a tax vote, and most Yeolis take a dim view to feeding invaders, preferring to see them killed. Why then, foreigners always ask, don’t you make them work for their food? It is only a short step from that, we answer, to slavery.

I remember that command council as if I lived it a thousand times. Voices rose, and Emao-e truly showed why her usename was Steel-eyes. This had never happened in the Enchian Wars.

I remember the arguments. “He is trying to outmatch us in ruthlessness,” Hurai snapped. “He can force those peasants, and doesn’t he care a dust-speck for them? We could put them all to the sword, for all he knows! Maybe we should.”

“But these men are farmers,” Oteka said. “You can’t swing an axe or plow a straight furrow with one thumb. They might as well be slaves, for how much choice they had to be here.”

“That’s a kyash-pile! They’re armed, if they can fight us they can turn on their slave-drivers, if they want. It’s a choice as it always is for everyone, however much Lakans and their barbaric customs pretend it isn’t.”

And so on. Suddenly, when it had become fairly heated, Hurai said, “Chevenga, we haven’t heard from you, what do you think?” in his way of doing things unexpected to break such impasses.

I was divided in myself. The argument for thumbing was plenty compelling, but I couldn’t forget these were untrained farmers. I sat thinking, torn, and Emao-e drummed her fingers on her belt and said, “When you’re semanakraseye, you’ll have to settle these things in the blink of an eye.”

Almost absently I thought, “I have not looked for the path unconceived.” The flash came, and then I could barely believe no one else had thought of it.

“If it is a contest of ruthlessness Astyardk wants,” I said, “why don’t we give him one? Tell him we will put them to the sword if he doesn’t retreat? That way we will free them whole but still win, as if we had fought them.” It fleshed itself out on my tongue as I spoke. “We ask for all the land they’re occupying, then let him haggle us back. Declare it publicly, in front of the ten thousand and then all the Leyere army, so he’ll have to agree, or be blamed for it himself by all Laka; then no one will have lost, but him.”

In the silence that fell, I felt naked; of course there must be some plain reason why it could not work, too obvious even to mention, which was why no one else had thought of it. I remembered the first plan I’d ever thought up in council, and the empty moment just after I’d spoken it. The first heady instant, I saw them overwhelmed by my brilliance; the next I suddenly saw a thousand flaws, enough to reduce it to tatters and prove me hopeless as a general, and thought they only refrained from laughing out of civility. As it was, the silence had just been that of consideration, and then they’d casually taken up refining it. The truth had been somewhere between: it was a serviceable plan, and needed some polishing as they all do.

Now I told myself, be sensible. It’ll be the same this time. Emao-e slapped her head. “My mind’s going to stone,” she said. “What’s that old saying? ‘The children shall lead…’” All-Spirit, I thought, I overwhelmed her at least a bit with my brilliance. Two or three others were staring at me with their brows high. Hurai looked at me suddenly in his unnerving way, and said, “You understand, lad, that if we do this and there is no agreement, we will have to kill them. Else no one will ever trust our word again.” I said, “Of course I understand that.” It went chalk by a majority.

We parleyed with the Lakan general in Leyere, Korsardak, to make the threat as well as begin the ransom bargaining. He said we must give him ten days to consult, which of course meant he was sending a courier to his king. In the meantime, we settled the ransom amounts, let go Arzaktaj and the other nobles, and set free about three thousand Lakans who had not borne arms. The ten thousand we fed out of the Lakan army’s larder. On the tenth day, true to his word, Korsadak came out with the ivy branch.

Emao-e and Hurai had always taken me on parleys, as learning to conduct them was part of my apprenticeship. After the formalities of peace-oaths and truth-oaths were all done, I waited for Korsadak to get off his horse and ask that a table be set up to spread out a map, but he stayed mounted, drawing out a scroll.

“My King Astyardk son of Astazand, Blessed Hand of Parshahask, Soul of Gold in the Eternal Gaze,” he said, and so on, as this went on for a while, “answers you, Godless barbarians of Yeola-e, thus: ‘There shall be no negotiation as my word is immovable as stone. I will not give up a fingerwidth of land, for any number of lives.’”