The Daughters of Vei, Chapter 6

Kivli tries everything she can think of to salvage the coup.

Previously on Daughters of Vei… Kivli saw visions, Varyta got intelligence reports, and both came to the same dark conclusion. Then they did some hard drugs and decided to take matters into their own hands, and after bungling the initial attempt on the Kogon’s life, the rebels brought their case to the rest of the captains. Alakuz shut their arguments down, putting himself directly in Kivli’s crosshairs (and fast-tracking his own promotion) in the process, and now we’re off to the races.

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(The Daughters of Vei is a prequel to The Shieldbreaker Saga. You can buy the first novel of the series here.)

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Ganruz ul-Tanaz couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t fucking believe it.

The utter disrespect of the whole thing.

One impressive moment in the room was enough for Metan to throw all protocol out the fucking window, was that it?

And now the half-breed bastard outsider who killed his sister’s kid a dozen years ago, who should have been drop-kicked out of the Sand Gate that very day—or even better, been given to him and the boy’s father for some real punishment—this murderous piece of shit foreigner was supposedly Ganruz’s equal?

Fuck that.

He grabbed his sword and pulled it from its sheath even before he had stormed through the front door of the hall.

Fuck that.

Absolutely not.

He’d kill Kivli himself. Right now. Her and the three stupid little cocksuckers who’d dishonored their fathers by following the ul-Kogon into ruin. He’d save the fucking day himself, drag the traitor to the Kogon by the fucking ear, and the Kogon would see his worth, finally, and ask him to replace Metan—who was clearly too old for the job; that much was obvious after tonight—and maybe he’d ask for the black bastard’s head as a reward for his heroics, too.

But one thing at a time. He looked left, then right, and saw his quarry less than one hundred yards ahead of him.

“Kivli!” he shouted.

All five traitors turned to face him.

“Stand and die, you treasonous cunt!” he roared, and with that he charged.

—

“He’s mine,” muttered Kivli, and the others stepped aside.

Ganruz ul-Tanaz would not be difficult to kill. Angry men were rarely patient enough to protect themselves properly.

The only question Kivli had at the moment was which of the three men charging at her was the real Ganruz, and which two were the zok having a bit more fun with her. If, gods forbid, there was a next time, she’d be mixing it with water.

Best kill all three of them to be safe.

—

Maraz watched in horror and fascination as Kivli slipped past an already-gutted Ganruz, attacking in what seemed to be several directions at once.

The older man was down already, bleeding from three different wounds from two different blades—any of which could have been mortal on its own—but Kivli was still whirling her weapons with the ferocity and desperation of a woman fighting many enemies at the same time.

She stopped a few moments later than was necessary. Ganruz-Ohta fell face-first into the dust of the main road of Kalaa Ukruv’r, dead several times over.

“Fuck!” he heard someone shout. “The traitors killed Ganruz! Weapons! Weapons, now! Get your companies up!”

The voice trailed off as its owner rounded the corner back towards the entrance of the Avla Ohtar. Within moments, he heard new voices in the middle distance, the other Ohtar calling out the battle standards of their respective companies—calling them to arms as well.

Maraz looked at Tarav and Zimion. “Did you boys pick battle standards yet?”

Zimion flinched as he looked down at Ganruz again. “No.”

“Me neither.”

Kivli seemed to materialize next to them. “You have to go. Get your men armed, and meet me back at the Avla Oproz. They’ve moved the Kogon out of there, obviously, but that’s the best place inside the fortress to mount a defense. Get your companies there. I’ll take the Prince back with me to get my girls moving, and we’ll try to distract everyone else enough to give you some space.” She looked all three of them in the eyes. “Why are you still fucking standing here? We’re at war. Go! Fucking run.”

Maraz ran.

—

Tarav was most of the way back to his barracks when he looked behind him and noticed the dark swordsman hot on his tail.

He broke into a full sprint. He only had a few hundred yards to go to make it to relative safety in numbers—

“Guards!” he heard Alakuz shout from behind him. “Take him!”

Twelve men in full gear were suddenly cutting a path away from one of the fancier houses on the street—was that Metan-Ohta’s house?

He veered right to outflank them. A long spear thudded into a wooden doorframe perilously close to his ankle, and he tripped over it, forced himself into a clumsy roll, and was back up on his feet quickly enough to avoid getting surrounded.

He was only fifty yards from the barracks house now. Maraz’s untimely warning about the lack of a battle standard rang in his ears.

“WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” he screamed at the top of his lungs as turned into the alley that ended at his front door.

Within seconds the door flew open and a few dozen of his men, wild-eyed and terrified and so very green—but armed, at least, and as ready as they could be— charged screaming past him and towards the first enemy they saw.

—

Alakuz could tell from the volume and from the pitch that the enemy had numbers but were terrified, and that was good enough for him, in a tight space.

He doubted he had enough time to turn his men around, anyway.

He shouted “BRACE!” and six of his guards dropped to one knee at the edge of the alley with their shields anchored to the ground and their long spears resting on the bosses, pointed slightly upwards, to about chest height. The others leaned on the front rank’s shoulders and drove their spears forward to take the momentum out of the charge.

A half-dozen of the attackers were dead within seconds, but the next wave got past the long spears and hit the tiny shieldwall with too much force not to knock it backwards.

Alakuz saw his right-most three men go down under sword thrusts and stepped into the gap to stop his men from being flanked and encircled. He ducked a wild sword swing from one of Tarav’s boys and slew him with a single thrust to the chest, then shouted “FALL BACK!” at the top of his lungs—and then tapped the man next to him gently with his left elbow. “Back one!” he called at closer to normal volume.

His nine guards all took one step backwards right as he did.

“One more!” he called, and his line moved back another step.

He looked over his shield at the enemy mob in the alley: they were in confusion. A good many of them seemed to have fallen back in a panic on Alakuz’s desperate sounding command (one of Metan’s favorite tricks) and were now bumping into the advancing second wave, fatally sapping their momentum. The ones who were left alone out in front of his tiny shieldwall seemed keenly uninterested in any further hostilities without direct orders.

Tarav’s instinct had been good enough to save his own skin—but it wasn’t a move to inspire confidence and order in a company that had never seen a real fight before.

He tapped the man next to him. “Double time back to Metan’s. Keep the shields up.” His men began shuffling backwards in formation.

In front of him he could see Tarav-Ohta gesturing ferociously towards the other side of the fortress. He heard someone shout, “The fuck is Kivli doing giving us orders?” and nodded to himself in grim satisfaction.

She was making the smart but predictable choice: the traitors would be forming up to hold the Avla Oproz. The ones who made it that far, at least.

He had to find Metan.

—

“Ohta? Are you coming?”

Georz ul-Zimion had his company standing at the ready outside the Avla Ohtar. He’d been confused when he saw Metan’s servant Rala still standing at the door, and decided to go in and check on his commander.

Metan was still in his seat. He did not respond to Georz, did not look back.

Georz took a few steps forward and leaned over the table to make sure the old man was at least alive.

His eyes were open, and his fists were clenched, and he was staring at the middle of the table like it had disobeyed him.

“Ohta?”

Metan looked up, startled. “Uh. Go. I’ll be there shortly.”

Georz saluted and left without another word. Metan would clearly not be ‘there,’ wherever there was. The chain of command was fucked, and all the senior men would likely start measuring their—

His train of thought was interrupted by shouting and clashing steel.

Fuck.

He yanked his sword from its sheath and ran out of the hall already armed, ignoring protocol for what must have been the first time in his entire military career, and landed in the middle of a street brawl between his company and another. He couldn’t tell who. The cleanly shaved heads of his men were easy enough to distinguish in the moonlight, thankfully, to keep him from feeling too much concern about the risk of self-inflicted casualties. Any hope of a shield wall was long gone, though. This would be sloppy, a brawl. He prayed silently that it was, at least, one of the traitors’ warbands they were fighting, then charged into the middle of the fracas.

He bulled down one of the men in front of him with a full head of hair and cut down savagely with his sword, cutting deep into the man’s skull with one stroke. He stomped on the man’s shoulder, sawing his sword out towards him rather than try to pull it upwards and open himself up too much, and thrust it forward into the face of the next closest unshorn warrior.

Then he heard a man doing a mediocre impression of a falcon, and suddenly several men were shouting “Fall back!” and the enemy, whoever the fuck they were, were retreating in bad order.

“Hello, Georz!” Mikal ul-Zalan was jogging towards him, probably smirking. He looked Georz up and down and Georz realized he must be covered in at least one of his victim’s blood. “Started without us, eh?”

“Shit, they started without me while I was inside.”

“As long as you didn’t miss too much. Where’s Metan?”

Georz had forgotten about Metan for a moment. He frowned and shook his head.

“What does that mean?”

“He’s not coming.”

“Then who the fuck is in command?”

—

Maraz was hurrying his company back the way they came, back towards their barracks house and, hopefully, the relative safety of its proximity to the Daughters’.

That exchange had gone very, very poorly. It was going poorly even before the Angh-Ner showed up. He’d need to find another way through the fortress to meet the rest of his friends at the chieftain’s hall and avoid any more combat until he had support—and try to figure out some answers for the many grumbling voices he heard coming from behind him.

“Were we just fighting the fucking Kaljur, just now?”

“Madness. Absolute fucking madness.”

“What the fuck has he gotten us into?”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

He stopped suddenly. “Company, halt!”

The men shuffled to a stop behind him.

He made himself look as big and as tough as possible. “Do any of you gentlemen have anything you’d like to ask me?”

No one responded. He nodded and softened his tone a bit. “Listen. It’s going to be a rough night, boys. I know we’re already down a few men. We have to stick together and trust each other if we’re going to get through this.”

“Yes, Ohta,” came a sullen response.

—

Antaz ul-Inaz was not presently interested in anything Maraz-Ohta had to say about trust.

He could see well enough in the dark to know damn well that his commander had, in fact, just ordered them to charge Georz ul-Zimion and the Kaljur.

Something big was going on, something Maraz wasn’t telling them—something that was almost certainly going to get him and all his friends killed.

And Antaz would do whatever it took to stop that from happening.

—

“T’kar Kveh! Raise up!”

The deep, booming voice Attala ul-Marak heard outside his company’s barracks decidedly did not belong to Ganruz-Ohta.

He jumped into action, dressing quickly and grabbing his sword and belt from the hook next to his door. He hurried through the main room, past dozens of men still struggling to stir themselves, and was alone out front within a minute of hearing the voice.

It belonged to Uskol ul-Sakara of the Dazvar Muz, who was standing at the head of his company, looking even grimmer than usual.

Attala saluted him. “Elakon, Uskol-Ohta. I’m pretty sure Ganruz-Ohta was called to a meeting at the Avla Oh—”

“Ganruz is dead. You his deputy?”

“Yes, Ohta. Attala ul-Marak.”

“Right. I need your company ready to fight immediately. We’ve got a rebellion to put down.”

“Gods, who?”

“The Prince and his three dogs—and the Daughters.”

Attala’s head was swimming. “Fuck.”

“Raise up your company, Ohta. We don’t have time—”

He called me Ohta. Attala nodded and turned back into the barracks without another moment’s hesitation.

“T’kar Kveh! On your feet!”

The men who weren’t already out of bed sprung into action. Attala looked around the room once.

“Gentlemen, I need every one of you outside and ready for battle in a hundred count.”

A voice called out from the darkness at the far end of the room. “Where’s the Ohta?”

Attala sighed. “You’re looking at him. One! Two. Three…”

There were a few salutes in response, but most of the men were already racing against the internal counter in their heads, pulling on tunics and trousers and robes and mail. He stepped back outside to give them room at the doorway.

Uskol nodded to him and he walked over to wait with him.

“What’s the plan, anyway?”

“The four rebel commanders scattered to go get their companies after the meeting ended—and after Kivli killed Ganruz. Sorry for that, by the way. Were you two close?”

“Close enough. He was decent to me.”

“Yeah. Condolences. Anyway, Kivli’s the only one with any command experience, and she’ll probably want to take and hold the Avla Oproz. My best guess is, she’s having them all meet her there.”

“And we want to cut them off before they can get there.”

“Yeah. If she can put four companies into a shieldwall in that courtyard, they’ll be hard to beat. Numbers won’t matter as much in that kind of enclosure.”

“Plus, they’ll have the chieftain’s hall.”

“Right. All bad unless we beat them there. Where are your men?”

“I gave them to the count of one hundred. They’ll be out on time.”

The first several T’kar Kveh proved him right at seventy-three.

—

Mikal and his men were keeping pace just behind Georz’s boys. Running in mail and carrying weapons was not light work, but the Angh-Ner were eager to prove that they were not soft after four years of inaction. It wasn’t more than a mile or two around the entire fortress, anyway, and less to where they were headed—even if their quarry was leading them the long way around.

Mikal and Georz had figured out quickly enough where the rebels were headed. There was really only one place for them to go to have a chance of lasting the night. Whichever make-believe Ohta they were chasing had been a fool to try to lead his men straight up the main road. He’d gotten lucky not to lose his whole company right away. Georz was adamant that he would have settled them all quickly if he hadn’t been inside checking on Metan at the precise wrong moment.

It was a believable enough sentiment. The Kaljur were hard bastards, same as his Angh-Ner. Mikal was glad he and Georz had found each other tonight. Their two companies together would be able to put paid to anyone that tried to get in their way. Especially these children playing at kingmakers.

The real question was who was going to deal with Kivli and her shieldmaidens. He and his men were quickly approaching the part of the wall where the Daughters’ barracks was, but she and her girls were probably already at the courtyard waiting for backup. She could absolutely hold the chieftain’s hall against the full weight of the tribe with four companies, if it came to that, and then there would surely have to be some sort of negotiation, and then who fucking knew what would happen—

“VEI!”

The scream came from behind him and to the right. Several more screams that were not battlecries followed in quick succession in the split second it took Mikal to stop running and turn around.

“Behind us!” he shouted, hoping to all the gods Georz would hear him over the din. Or even that he would hear the din.

He craned his neck to try to get a better look over the heads of his soldiers, who were stumbling to an ungainly halt and desperately trying to turn around to face their attackers. There clearly wasn’t enough room for them to maneuver. Kivli had placed her ambush perfectly.

To kill her own tribesmen.

He might lose his whole company to that mad woman.

He opened his mouth to shout an order and realized the only thing he could think to say was, “What the fuck is she thinking?”

He said nothing.

A roar went up from in front of him. All credit to his boys: they hadn’t panicked. He could see something resembling a shield wall forming, with a makeshift front rank pushing their enemy backward, finally, using their size advantage for whatever it was worth. There were more screams—including some from women’s voices, this time—and then it was quiet again, over just as quickly as it had begun.

Georz appeared next to him. “What the fuck happened?”

Mikal looked away from his friend, then bent at the waist and spilled the contents of his stomach onto the street in front of him.

—

Georz knew he and his company should keep chasing their quarry, but he simply wasn’t going to leave Mikal and what was left of the Angh-Ner by themselves without any support. It wasn’t an option.

“What do you mean she wasn’t there?”

“She wasn’t there, Ohta. It wasn’t the whole company. It’s just the twelve bodies here among ours. We didn’t find any others anywhere, didn’t hear anyone running away, nothing.”

“Twelve of them just killed forty-two of us. That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Forty-three, Ohta. Emran ul-Zamal isn’t going to make it. He’s asking for your help.”

Mikal closed his eyes for a moment and nodded. “I’ll be right there.” He looked like he was about to be sick again. Georz wouldn’t have judged him.

“I’m sorry. I should have seen them.” He patted his friend on the shoulder.

Mikal was clenching his fists so hard that they were shaking. “They didn’t want to be seen. They waited for the chance to do the most damage they could. Just like she told them to.” He looked up at Georz. “They have to die. Every last fucking one of them.”

Georz nodded. “I’m with you.”

“Okay. We have to keep moving. I know we do. I’m just going to go take—” Mikal gritted his teeth again— “take care of this one last man, and then we’ll go.”

“Alright.”

Georz watched Mikal walk unsteadily towards his remaining men and accepted the fact that Kivli would probably have at least one extra company with her in the courtyard before too long.

They’d deal with it together after Mikal made his sacrifice.

—

Kivli was, at that very moment, all the way across the Kalaa with the rest of her shieldmaidens, watching four companies of the enemy run past her.

It had become obvious to her, within moments of killing Ganruz, that the Prince’s three little friends were a massive liability, and that the only way they could possibly become useful was if they somehow got their companies to the courtyard more or less intact.

Which was, frankly, not fucking likely.

The spacing of the barracks houses along the wall was working against them. The absence of company battle standards, the total lack of any combat experience within their ranks, the speed at which the rest of the Ohtar had moved to muster their men? All working against them.

Not to mention that, just from their faces, she could tell they hadn’t trusted their men enough to tell them what they were planning.

Idiots.

She and her girls would have to do everything themselves—which, if Kivli was honest with herself, was probably the way she preferred it in the first place.

Her warriors hadn’t batted an eye when she showed up at the barracks, Prince Varyta in tow, and told them the state of things—that the plan had gone to shit, that they were at war with the rest of the tribe and horribly outnumbered.

That tonight was very likely the night.

Liliti had all but demanded the honor of leading the party tasked with staying behind near the barracks for an act of kol. “It should be me, Ohta. I will inform her of your impending arrival.” She was a good girl. Based on the distant screaming they had all heard a few moments before, Liliti and her sisters had done their job well and were on their way to their reward.

Kivli and the rest of the Daughters would have to make trouble for the Kogon’s companies making their way around the other side of the fortress. Zimion ul-Kulava had led his boys through this way a short while ago, clearly hurrying to outpace some pursuit.

Now they were here: in the torchlight she could make out black shields (Uskol ul-Sakara’s Dazvar Muz) and white shields (Tobiaz ul-Emran’s Dazvar Valaz), and while she wasn’t sure of who the two other companies were, she could tell this was her best opportunity to pin down a large chunk of the enemy—and buy the stupid children she was looking after some time to get in position.

She tapped Mirani on the shoulder twice. Now.

Mirani pulled her bowstring tight and loosed an arrow into the sword-hand side of the warriors with the white shields.

—

The arrow hit its target in the throat, splashing drops of blood all over his white shield and the shields of his linemates.

An instant later, twenty more arrows were flying into the Dazvar Valaz line.

“Shield wall! Shield wa—” screamed Tobiaz-Ohta before an arrow from a second volley ripped through his open mouth and buried itself where his spine met his skull.

—

Zamal ul-Zamal watched the already bloodied Dazvar Valaz roar with fury and hurl themselves headlong towards the source of the arrows that killed their fellows—and saw an opportunity to end the battle. He screamed “FORWARD!” and broke into a sprint towards the next alleyway over, a few yards further down from where all those white shields had been painted red.

He ran with his gilt-edged sword already out, eyes wide, looking for a spot where his company could turn to flank the Daughters and punish them for what they’d just done to their own people.

The T’Kar Kulta would be the heroes of this battle. He would be the hero of this battle.

—

Katuz ul-Uzan was sure he heard Uskol-Ohta shout for Zamal-Ohta and his comapny to hold their position.

But it was too late for that, and suddenly he found himself racing through a tiny alley between two houses across the street from the wall.

The rings of houses throughout the fortress were uneven, built in rough concentric circles across the main streets of the Kalaa—all of which led to the ovular courtyard in front of the chieftain’s hall.

A good number of these little side paths would open back up into one of the main roads. Most of them, even.

But after the third left turn Zamal attempted and turned back from, Katuz had a bad feeling that this particular alley might not be one of them.

The front ranks of the company stopped. Katuz could hear Zamal grumbling as he decided whether to keep going or turn around. He heard a fluttering sound above him that sounded suspiciously like a curtain being blown in a breeze, and looked up just in time to see an arrow fly out of an open window towards him.

He felt it fly past his left jaw—felt the breeze on his neck as death picked one of his linemates instead—and instinctively dropped to one knee below his shield. A full volley of arrows immediately followed the first. One of them bit deep into his shield but didn’t break through.

Several of the others tore into the bodies of his friends.

There was shouting and screaming all around him, but no one was giving any orders. Zamal must be dead already. The rest of them would be dead any moment unless someone did something.

“To me!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Talat!”

Get down, overlap shields over everyone’s heads. Make a tent. Just like we’ve practiced every day for years—except usually there are more of us.

Someone jostled his right shoulder on the way down to join him. A few others got down next to them. “TALAT!” he screamed again, with all the breath he had. Another arrow thudded into the wood of his shield. “TALAAAAAAT!” There was the clattering of iron shield rims against wood, and a couple dozen thunks as another round of arrowheads stuck in the roof of the talat, and above them came a horrifying, keening scream from their attackers, and Katuz gritted his teeth and gripped his sword tight with his other hand and waited for the charge to come.

—

Alari sat on the floor between two of her three children. They had kept quiet the whole time, thank the gods, as if they knew what would happen if they made too much noise and disrupted the other woman’s plans. The youngest, Edren, was sitting across the room, smiling and waving goodbye to their unexpected guest.

“Bye-bye! See soon!”

“Good-bye, little one,” cooed the woman with the tall, blood-soaked braids and the bow. “See you again.”

It was only after the Daughter of Vei closed the door that Alari rushed over to her son, hugged him close, and burst into tears.

“Aright, Mama, no cry,” the boy said brightly.

—

Katuz realized the Daughters weren’t coming to finish the job at about the same time that he noticed he’d been holding his breath.

He looked around him: in the dark, he couldn’t easily tell which of his boys were with him under the Talat, but he could tell how few there were.

He stood up gingerly, knowing that the moment he broke the plane of the tent roof he was as good as dead if any of Kivli’s archers were still waiting for them.

There were none. They’d gone.

He turned towards where the front of the company had been and saw Zamal ul-Zamal dead on the ground, pierced by half a dozen arrows—and, as he expected, most of his men dead with him. The six men in the company who carried bows hadn’t even managed to get them unslung before they were shot.

The rest of the company stood up too.

“Fuck,” breathed one of the men next to him.

“What are your orders?” asked another.

“What?” Katuz wasn’t immediately sure whether the question was for him. But no one else spoke, and then someone nudged him.

He looked around. Everyone seemed to be waiting on him to say something.

“Back the way we came,” he said, more quietly than he meant to. “Shields up.”

—

Amiri had woken up with a start when she heard the screaming outside her home. She heard her daughter Nidali call “Mama?” and shushed her, harder than she’d meant to, and gestured for the little girl to lie flat.

She did the same.

Now that the alley was quiet again, Amiri sat up and looked out the window.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but when they did, she saw all the bodies on the ground, and gasped before she could think to catch herself.

“What is it, Mama? Is it monsters?” Nidali asked, tottering towards her mother.

Amiri turned and knelt to intercept her, drawing her in for an embrace and a kiss on the head. “No, my love. Of course not.” She kissed her child again, willing her racing heartbeat to slow. “No such thing as monsters.”

—

Read the final chapter.

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Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |