180 - The battle of Haiu Menshir

“Kyashin kevyalin… they’re coming straight at us, they’re headed here! Mahachao ayana, what do we do…? Krero! Krero!”

One of the guards on my roof yelled this, three eight-days into my second-last moon here (I could not help but count days the Arkan way, now). I scrambled up. On the horizon beyond the trees, I saw three red sails, the mark of the Arkan navy.

“Kyash. I warned her… what have we got? A cormarenc?”

“No, Cheng… there’s privateers with a pentekonter but—”

“Those are fast frigates. Not a chance we could outrun them.” I raised my battlefield voice. “Gear up! Everyone! Wake up the night-shift!”

“What?” Krero was just coming off the top of the ladder when I spun past him and scrambled down. “Chevenga, you can’t, wait, what are you—”

“Gear up! Everyone, gear up with everything you’ve got! Move, move, move, move!” I ran inside, grabbed the armour they’d brought me to train in and Chirel, and went back outside to harangue them more while I dressed. “It’s the kyashin Arkans, they’re coming with three kyashin ships faster than anything we’ve got so we can’t flee so we’re going to do the thing you do when you can’t flee!”

“Chevenga, you’re crazy!” That reminded me; the ends of the green ribbon still showed, so I jammed them in under my wristlet. “If there’s a hundred on each of those things, that’s three hundred, against twenty…” Krero was back down the ladder now. “Cheng, you can’t just do this, I’m in command here!”

“Well, if you have a better idea, start giving orders!” He froze, with his mouth open. “We aren’t just twenty—but that depends on us getting down to Sailortown right now!” Helmet under my arm, I took off flat-out towards Haiuroru. Six or seven who were already in their gear chased after me. The rest could catch up.

In the city, Haians were already looking out to sea, alarmed. Full-armed, we blew through the gate by which no weapons must pass, going the other way. Sailortown was in an uproar; on the streets and piers, people of every race on the Miyatara were running back and forth, yelling, heaving things, or readying ships to fly, fearing whatever they had to fear from Arko.

I jumped up on a bollard, drew Chirel and hailed in every language I knew except Arkan. “To arms! To arms, all those who love Haiu Menshir! They are coming to conquer—to break the World’s Compact entirely, to do Gods-only-know-what to the healers! But they’re only three ships, because they don’t expect a fight here, so we don’t need to let them do this! To arms! Grab what you’ve got! I have a plan!”

That was pure lie. But Krero and Sachara and several others of mine drew their own weapons and took up the cry, and the crowd began to grow, bearing knives and sailor’s hooks and the odd spear or sword, and angrily encouraging each other. Probably their ships weren’t fast enough to outrun the frigates either. When someone yelled up at me, “Who the fik are you?” Krero roared back, “Show some respect, saltlicker—he led us to defeat the Lakans at Nikyana, then again at Kamis, and their mamokal at Leyere!” Sach even started making things up. Sometimes modesty doesn’t serve.

At the edge of a crowd a clutch of Srians, ebon-black and graceful and a head taller than everyone else, stood with bows on their shoulders, the kind so long than only a Srian can fully draw one. There were more coming, about forty by my guess; probably they had wounded here whom they weren’t willing to leave to Arkan mercy. Looking out from them to the piers, I got the flash all through my mind, and the plan came to me whole.

“Those two ships—move them elsewhere!” There were two piers that were otherwise empty. The Arkans would want to dock together; since their commander was not expecting a fight, it wouldn’t occur to him that he might be moving into a place chosen by an enemy. Some people ran to do it. I had about seventy Srians now, their captain wearing a helmet plumed with long orange feathers. “Half of you there, the other half there”—I pointed to the piers on either side of the two empty ones. “Go right onto the ships, hide yourself behind the sides, rigging, whatever there is to hide behind. Nock arrows when they come off the ships in order, and shoot on my command, which I won’t give until they’re all off the ships and ranged along the piers.” He acknowledged by a smart rap on his own chest in the Srian style. “Krero: night shift around the end of that pier, day-shift on that one. Everyone else, position yourself behind us, but: stay hidden. If there isn’t enough cover, make some, by grabbing crates or bales or whatever. We’re going to surprise them. Whoever spoils it dooms us all to death and Haiu Menshir to Arkan slavery.”

Beyond the breakwater, the Arkan sails towered now, casting scarlet reflections across the harbour. Everyone scrambled to find places, moving things to hide behind, directing each other to make it look natural, giggling nervously. The Arkan commander would be the middle ship and take the pier to his sword-side, so I hid behind an amphora standing near the end of it.

Now waiting, I had time to be afraid. I counted years; it had been almost five since I’d commanded. What crucial thing had I forgotten, in haste or rustiness or weakness of mind? No point running it all over in my head now. I peeked out from behind the pot to watch the Arkans come in, hearing the splash of the oars and the barks of the coxswains. The scarlet-armoured solas stood in twenty spear-straight ranks of five per ship, their spear-points and helms shining in the sun.

I thought of Vae Arahi, and lost fear. I want you; I want to see your blood spurt and your bodies fall, I want to hear your death-cries and feel the clench of your flesh through my sword-grip. I want to see you all sprawled corpses. I remembered Azaila saying it is just as possible to have too much anger as too much fear. There was an odd numbness to it, though. Perhaps it’s madness, from all I’ve suffered. I had never hungered like this to kill Lakans. Chirel felt good in my hand.

Moving to commands in Arkan, the okas crew made fast the hawsers and thumped the ramps down. The Aitzas commander came off, a drawn sword in one hand and a set of polished shackles in the other, the Arkan signs of conquest. Turned out to impress, not fight, he wore parade-armour made to fit his paunch, and no helmet. He looked plenty pleased with himself to be here. Of course they’d had to send a man like that; anyone decent-minded would balk. Behind him marched an underling holding the gold-leafed eagle-standard.

The Aitzas turned grandly and strutted up the pier, and the solas of two ships fell into step behind him, in a column five abreast, spears upright. “Ready, on my command, not before,” I hissed to whoever of mine could hear me. I could feel the nervousness in the air, raw among the sailors—someone had soiled himself, I could smell, but to his credit he had not betrayed us by fleeing—and more controlled among my guards, but still thick. They were elite, but they’d known nothing but defeat at the hands of Arkans. “You’ll all feel better in a moment,” I whispered.

When the commander was close enough, I leapt out and charged him. Utterly surprised, he stood flat-footed, and all his men froze mid-step, while I struck off his head, sending it tumbling into the harbour. The standard-bearer made to parry with the standard, so I faked him one way and beheaded him the other. “Yeolis hold the piers, Srians loose arrows!”

Holding Arkan irregulars is easy work for Yeoli elite, even swords against spears, and they’ll have spears soon enough. It was joy beyond joy, to use Chirel in the cause for which I’d been trained all my life, not slaking the sick lusts of a mob of Arkans, and I let my hand fly with relish. Strung out along the piers, the solas had no cover from the arrows, and no way to answer other than thrown spears, which were little use—truly they had not expected a fight, bringing no archers or javelineers. As the arrows starting taking them down, they fell into disarray, some trying to dash back to the ships and drawing the thickest fire, some trying to press those ahead into us, all of them cursing and yelling.

I let it go for a while, then pulled out, got up on a crate and called a halt. The front ranks of Arkans, chests heaving, stepped back from scarlet corpses now piled two or three deep. Someone moaned and then cried in pain. From somewhere in me, somehow, my tongue found one-down Arkan.

“Solas! Did you think your Steel-Armed God would let you do this unpunished? Where are your hearts? Where are your souls? I doubt there’s even one of you who was never healed by a Haian—had your bleeding stopped, your flesh stitched, your pain relieved—and you can even stand here, showing your faces?” My words went home for a lot of them, I saw by the gauntleted hands thrown over eyes. I heard a whisper among them, from one who must be from the City. “Shen… that’s Karas Raikas!”

“Where do you think you’re going to go after you die—either here at our hands, or later? How do you think it will go for you in the Celestial Hall of Judgment, when it’s read on your record, ‘He raised spear to enslave Haiu Menshir. He broke the World’s Compact’?”

“I didn’t know this was Haiu Menshir till we got here!” one of them yelled from the back. A chorus of others joined in, agreeing. It seemed sincere to me, and with Arkans was not implausible. An Imperator may think himself above the World’s Compact; warriors, not so much. Perhaps they’d have mutinied if they’d been told.

“Well, do the right thing, then!” I said. “What your Steel-Armed God did was put us here, to stop this travesty. Surrender and we’ll spare you.”

“We will do no such thing.” On the bow of the centre ship, like a black pillar, stood a Mahid.

I want you more than anyone else… more than anything… A well-aimed arrow would be perfect right now, I thought. The Arkans wavered, torn. The more seasoned ones, the commanders, tightened their lips; one drew back his spear for a throw, the point and his eyes fixed on me. “Fine,” I said. “Srians loose arrows!” I jumped down, both to dodge the spear and get back in the fight. When I could spare a glance, the Mahid was gone, whether taking cover from or downed by arrows, I couldn’t tell.

When another thirty or so Arkans had fallen to the planks or into the harbour to die by drowning, if not their wounds, I called another halt. “Fik that Mahid,” said a man near their vanguard, who was about forty and wore insignia I remembered I’d seen in a book, the shoulder-flashes of a marine centurion, and whose face was streaked with tears. He threw his spear and his shield down clattering on the pier. “We are yours, Shefen-kas.”

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