43 - Seek and it flees; relinquish and it comes

They’d already shuttered all the windows on the first floor and barricaded the other two doors; now Krero said, “Let’s do all of them all the way up; those brown child-rapers can climb. And barricade all the ones on this floor.” Orders I should be giving. I let them pull the spear out of my hand.

Still sitting on me, Mana took a swig from his water-skin, then poured more over my face. “Let us know when you’ve pulled yourself together,” he said, more gently. “If you can’t be what we need than Kamina saved you for nothing.” I took a deep breath and said, “I’m fine. Get off me.”

Once all the windows were done, we ran to the roof, all but a few to watch the doors and windows. Bless the occupying Lakans, they’d added a parapet with arrow-slits. We were thickly surrounded; we wouldn’t have had much of a chance to rejoin other Yeolis, had we tried; I’d done right in that.

Now we watched them try to shoulder through our door, then take a beam to it. Not even one mamoka, I thought, would fit in this narrow street. In the opposite gutter, I could see Kamina, shoved aside like a broken weapon, very clearly dead, as if I could have had some hope.

They tried all the windows, and found that their own prison made a solid stronghold. They flung torches onto the roof, which was made of slate; we flung them back. They tried to shoot us from other roofs; we just crouched behind the wall. They called for grappling-hooks; but I’d sent five to look through the building for anything useful, and they came back carrying sacks of quicklime.

The Lakans threw up ropes and climbed in a mass on all four walls. When they were a bare man-height below us, we poured lime into their sweat-filmed faces and upward-turned eyes, until all had fallen or slid screaming to the ground. Their commander, a middle-aged noble with long hair-earrings—the sign of nobility in Laka—and the helmet-device of a ferret, screamed Lakan curses.

Now he sat down to think, and they waited in silent anger, like a wolf pack around a treed cat. That allowed us pause, too; and it was then we learned the truth of the old saying, “Action is carefree; in pause comes grief.”

The sounds of full battle were distant now, the Yeoli lines, such as they were, driven across the city; if they did not have their backs to the inside of the wall, they would soon. I found myself hearing Hurai’s voice, as if he were here testing me: “Where was our fault?”

Entrusting ourselves to the gate, I thought. Yet we had been caught weak anyway, by this new force. Underestimating Astyardk’s will to fight, then; insufficient spying within Laka itself? And what now? It all lay with how many would get away, how fast our reinforcements would come and so forth, things I could not know. I was far away from the place of information, of command. It sank in dully. So this is defeat, thought I who had known nothing but victory.

In pause comes truth. Here we stood, forty-six (we’d lost three others as well as Kamina) in the midst of numberless Lakans, in effect besieged. Right then I said, “Someone go down to the courtyard and see if there’s a well.” I imagined Tyeraha wondering where I was, cursing Jinai for having been wrong. If I ever became semanakraseye, it now seemed, it would be by my people paying ransom; and they’d have to pay what I was worth. And for that Kamina gave his life, I thought.

The Lakan commander was pacing now, in thought, while his men all waited, their looks divided between him and our heads. I started to get the feeling he was a bit slow. Leaving two watching them, I assembled my people. Once the word came back—there was a well in the a courtyard and food enough to last us for several days—I took off my crystal to pass round. “Our choices are two,” I said. “Surrender, or hold. What does everyone say?”

Some say it is a mistake, even cowardly, for a commander not to decide this alone. I will admit, I was not good at sacrificing someone else for the good of all, as witness Kamina; that has always been the most difficult thing for me. But to this day, I would call the same vote. If you do not permit Yeolis to choose for themselves when there is time, you might as well take the name Notyere.

Kunarda reached for the crystal first and I handed it to hime. “A girl from Leyere told me that if they catch you and you’re a woman, they’ll rape you, and if you’re a man, they’ll castrate you. That’s worse than crippled. I say, hold, and fight to the death.”

The sounds of battle from the town’s north edge had ceased, I noticed in the silence. “Better my parents know I died for Yeola-e,” Nyera said, “than I’m a slave in Laka somewhere, suffering Saint Mother knows what.”

“I know what Kamina would have voted,” said Isatenga. “You all saw in his act.”

Sachara took the crystal. “Sibs, we’re thinking we’re all just citizen warriors, and forgetting we have an anaraseye with us. What do we do about that?”

I reached for the crystal, but Sach passed it right past me to Mana. “I’d say fight, except for that. There are cracks in the walls for captives, chances for ransom, for escape, that you’d be good at, Cheng. To fight to the death—well, death ends all hope.”

“It’s all well and good to just think of ourselves here, and this town and this battle,” said Minao. “But we’ve got to think of all Yeola-e, and the future. Chevenga’s life is too precious to throw away.”

After several more arguing along the same lines, so that it looked like they were all swayed that way, they finally let me have the crystal and speak. I remember the circle of eyes, each pair fixing me in its own way.

“It’s our duty,” I said, “to make as much trouble for the Lakans as we can, to take plenty of them with us. As for me, well… You saw how that commander down there cursed, when we did them with the lime. He’s blaming me. If they figure out who I am… well, they know who killed Inkrajen, and who defeated their mamokal, and they might suspect I was part of opening the gate of Kantila, since I was the only one so young and with a sword on my shoulder in black. They might even know I was behind the deaths of the ten thousand. Lakans are vengeful. I’d be dead or worse, I think, if I fell into their hands.”

There was a silence so terrible I found myself wishing I’d said nothing. I saw: I had just declared myself dead, either way. Why, I wondered, doesn’t it feel like that? Why don’t my eyes doubt they will see the sun rise tomorrow? It is the fearlessness of the young, I thought, who think they are immortal. Then: but I never thought that.

I remembered Jinai’s prophecy: bad for a time, leading to good.

“Chen!” I barked, and heard the wind and the voice in my ears. They all jolted straight. “Enough looking at me as if I’m a ghost, the next who does does fifty push-ups. Look, it may be that if we stand firm, they’ll give a little, propose some deal to keep from losing more. Or we can. Of course they may not agree. But while death ends all hope, holding isn’t immediate death, and a lot can happen in between. We can even change our minds if it seems better, later. But surrendering now ends all choice, now.”

I saw them all draw in breaths, looking as if they’d been hit with cold water. No one had thought of it that way. “And in the silence,” I intoned, “Shininao looked around helplessly, and squealed, ‘I feel left out!’” One of our in-jokes; everyone broke out laughing.

The vote went chalk by a two-thirds majority, to hold. I knew what Mana was thinking of by his look: his urging me to save myself earlier today, which I had ignored. We sat together, some clasping shoulders, others weeping silently. I remembered, from the ancient work of strategy: if a general sees his warriors weeping while standing still, he should know they weep not in fear, but in the sorrow of having chosen to give their lives. It was something again to see it.

Then a call came from one of the wall watch. The Lakan commander had raised an ivy branch for a parley.

He spoke Lakan-clipped Enchian. “Greetings, godless barbarians! I, Klajen son of Klahenkten, say you should surrender. You are but a few in the midst of a host. We will starve you out, if there is no other way. Surrender, or we will kill you all.”

“While you were all lazing, god-enslaved Lakans,” I shouted back, “we chose to let you kill us—but taking taking ten or twenty or a hundred of you each with us. Which I think you know we can do.”

The lord’s brown face clearly showed his thought: “So much for that idea.” Definitely, he was a little slow. I mimicked it in words to my warriors, with the Lakan accent, and they all laughed again. Having chosen to give ourselves, we were lifted out of ourselves; the burden was on them now, and we were free.

Klajen sat thinking, frowning; then after a bit, hailed us again. “I wish to settle this matter quickly, and so will be generous,” he shouted. “Though I suspect you, barbarian commander, are far too cowardly to agree, I offer this: that you yourself face a champion of ours, Sakrent, his name, in single combat. If you are victorious, I shall grant you and all your men safe conduct out of our hold and to freedom, sworn upon my highest oath. But if he wins, your men are all our prisoners and their arms and armour forfeit. Do you agree?”

I leaned back from the parapet, unable to stifle my grin. “See?” I said to my warriors. “It’s like the saying: seek something and it flees, relinquish hope and it comes. If we’d surrendered, they’d be castrating and raping us right now.” Several laughed; Krero looked as if he wanted to kick me. “Men and women,” hissed Nyera. “They always kyashin forget us.”

“There might be a trick in this,” said Mana.

I called down asking for the oath, worded ‘men and women.’ Klajen stepped forward and drew his shortsword. “By my honor, may the King of Death and Lord of the World Beneath Worlds whose name is Parshahask strike off my head, my arms and my testicles and consign my heart to everlasting fire, should I lie or try treachery.” Touching both his hair-earring and his helmet with his shield-hand, Klajen mimed the strokes on his own body with his sword. “Second Fire come if I am forsworn.”

It was a severe oath, I had seen Lakan honor at Nikyana and of course there is always what holds warriors to honouring these things, that I’d learned so well with ten thousand of his compatriots, the prospect of never again being believed if they don’t. Nyera wondered aloud whether Parshahask was truly a Lakan god, or just a made-up word, but someone else knew it.

Klajen had his warriors empty the street before the door. A Lakan shouldered through the brown crowd to the open space, having little trouble, since his shoulders were level with their heads. They were the broadest I had ever seen; his arms where his armour showed them were like a mountain-lion’s legs, thick and with the veins standing out under brown skin. He had to have come with the reinforcements, I knew, else I’d know of him.

“Oooh, he’s big,” Sachara said.

“Not as big as a mamoka,” I said, and everyone laughed again. If anyone had the slightest doubt I could take him, I didn’t see a trace of it.

The Lakan champion bore a hand-and-a-half sword a good two hand-spans longer than Chirel; he began swinging it at blurring speed with the ease of the wind, and with such smoothness that I knew he had not only strength. “I agree!” I called down to Klajen. “My warriors, when you cheer for me, don’t use my real name, but All-seeing Rao. I don’t know, but it occurs to me that Parshahask might spare lopping off Klajen’s head and arms and testicles for breaking his oath to capture Fourth Chevenga. Let’s not take a chance.”

Good-byes at such a time are, of course, very bad luck, so I let them give me their blessings, and went downstairs, with others to clear the furniture from the door; they refused to let me help, in case I strained a muscle. As they slapped my shoulders, I said, “I will be back in a moment, and we’ll be free.”