The Daughters of Vei, Chapter 7

The rebellion comes to its only possible conclusion.

Previously on Daughters of Vei…No. Know what? We’re not doing this. It’s the finale. If you don’t know what’s up, you’ve got some reading to do.

Prologue | Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6

And now, without (almost) any further ado…the end.

---

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

---

Attala wasn’t going to release his men out of their shield wall until Uskol did. If the veteran commander wasn’t sure it was safe yet, then he sure as hell wasn’t going to disagree.

When they started hearing the screams from beyond the houses, Attala felt an instinctive desire to race in to try to rescue the two beleaguered companies, until he looked over at Uskol and saw he was already looking back at him. The older man shook his head once, firmly, then turned back to stare into the darkness where their tribesmen were killing each other.

Attala kept expecting the sun to rise, with how long it felt like they’d been waiting, but it stayed dark beyond the range of his company’s torches. It probably was no more than a few moments before the first white shield appeared out of the alley they’d all disappeared into.

Four more survivors burst forth after the first one. Then three more. A few moments later came another.

And that was it.

Attala waved them over, and the looks on their faces told the story well enough without him even bothering to ask for a report. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t need any more reason to fear or hate Kivli and the Daughters than the night had already provided.

More running footsteps came from his right, and he turned his head in time to see the first survivors of T’kar Kulta emerge from the other alleyway.

—

“Is that all of you?” shouted a deep voice from the shieldwall in front of Katuz.

“Yeah,” he shouted back. “Thirty-one left. Zamal-Ohta ran us down a—”

“Not the time. We have to keep moving. Roll your survivors up into Attala’s company and—”

“T’kar Kulta is intact,” Katuz snapped before he could stop himself.

There was a short pause.

“What’s your name?” called a different voice.

“Katuz ul-Uzan.”

“Alright. There’s nine Dazvar Valaz with me, too. You want them?”

“Did you say nine?” What a fucking night this was turning out to be.

“You want them or not?”

“Yes, Ohta, I’ll take them.” Katuz looked around at his men. “And we’ll guard the rear of the column. They won’t surprise us a second time.”

“Finally, someone speaking some fucking sense,” growled the deeper voice again. “Get your company organized, Ohta. Let’s get moving.”

—

Zimion ul-Kulava and company arrived at the courtyard of the Avla Oproz without incident.

He was thinking to himself that couldn’t believe his good luck when he heard Tarav shout “That’s enough!” and then heard several other voices shout things he couldn’t quite make out back at Tarav.

“What the fuck is going on over there?” he heard one of his men mutter from a few ranks behind him.

—

Tarav was about halfway to the point of drawing his sword anyway by the time the first man grabbed him by the shoulders from behind.

He broke the man’s grip and spun around, reaching towards his belt, when a fist appeared from out of nowhere on his left side and smashed into the bone just under his left eye. That staggered him, and then three more men were on him, grabbing for his arms, and after the first knee found its way up to his balls there was no more fight left in him.

—

Zimion heard the commotion around Tarav and spun around to face his men.

“Alright. Listen up. I have something—”

“Hey!” came a shout from behind him. “Are you in on it too?”

“In on what?” called back one of his men.

“Our esteemed Ohtar appear to have dragged us into a rebellion against the Kogon without fucking telling us!”

Dozens of voices at once shouted variations of ‘What the fuck?’ in response. Zimion sighed and slowly moved his hands over his head and away from his weapons, on the off chance it would save him a beating.

It didn’t.

—

Maraz could finally see the main road again.

He had eventually realized that the only real chance he’d have to escape the Kaljur and whoever else was supporting them was if he took his men off the main pathways.

The problem, of course, was that even during the day, it wasn’t the simplest of tasks to navigate through the alleys.

One of the problems.

His men were still grumbling, too. That didn’t get better as it became clearer that he wasn’t entirely sure where he was going.

But finally, after a few too many wrong turns, he’d righted himself, and now they’d be able to connect with Tarav and Zimion and Kivli and set up their defense properly.

“Come on, boys. Just a bit farther,” he called behind him.

His encouragement was met with sullen silence.

He jogged out of the alley onto the main road through Kalaa Ukruv’r—a street so obviously important no one had ever bothered to give it a proper name—and saw, twenty-odd paces in front of him, two companies of loyalists in a shield wall.

He’d taken too long.

A sword point touched his back. “Come on, Ohta,” muttered its owner. “Not too much farther now.” Then the voice raised. “Ohta, can you hear me? This was his fucking idea, not ours! Whatever the fuck is going on tonight, the rest of us want nothing to do with it.” Maraz recognized who was speaking now. Antaz ul-Inaz lowered his voice again. “Move or die right here.”

“You don’t understand.”

The sword point poked him more aggressively. “Last warning.”

He shook his head and started walking.

—

Varyta could not stop thinking about the eye.

He and his new personal guard of three shieldmaidens (“Three of mine are as good as a dozen of your father’s,” Kivli had quipped) had left the Daughters’ barracks a short while after the first real combat of the evening, when Liliti and her volunteers had done their act of kol against whomever had the misfortune of stumbling into their trap.

He and the three girls walked past the bodies from that skirmish on their way into the maze of sidestreets, and he’d noticed a detached eye lying in the street. There was no way to figure out whom it belonged to, but he was absolutely sure he felt its gaze following him as he walked past it and into the darkness.

‘Absolutely sure’ was probably an overstatement, given the logical impossibility of the whole fucking idea of a dead eye watching him.

But he felt it.

It was just another in a long list of dirty tricks the zok n’ved had played on his mind since last night.

The thing he found most unsettling, after the fact, was the memory of the total, perfect fucking clarity he’d felt after taking it—the feeling that he knew, without having to ask any further questions, that the only possible solution to their problem was to kill his father. Because the gods had said so. Because Kivli had said so.

That was what ‘absolutely sure’ felt like.

And the Daughters of Vei lived in absolute surety, in that place of perfect clarity. That was how they could kill their own without compunction. The Daughters didn’t even need to take zok n’ved to get there.

All they needed was Kivli’s word.

How many bodies, he wondered, had the girls dropped in his name this evening?

This was a mistake. The whole thing was a mistake. Every part of their plan had been fucked from the very beginning. There were so many better options than their harebrained assassination attempt. He could simply have challenged his father to a duel, for instance.

What the fuck were they thinking?

Not to mention, once his attempt failed, he could simply have owned his actions, denied anyone else’s involvement, and asked to die with a sword in his hand.

Only one man needed to die. That was always his intention.

But instead, Kivli had called out every single Ohta who refused to acknowledge him, and then butchered Ganruz right out in front of the godsforsaken hall, and now they were engaging in open fucking bloodletting against their own people. Even if, by some insane miraculous turn of events, they prevailed tonight, there’d barely be a tribe left to rule.

Kivli had fucked him.

Well, no. He had let her.

No, actually, he’d fucked himself.

Regardless, he was fucked. Best get on with it.

They were arriving at the courtyard now, somehow undetected amidst all the chaos, and he could see at least two companies’ worth of men milling around outside the chieftain’s hall. The Daughters weren’t there yet.

“Elakon, Oproz,” called out one of the men at the front door. “Tarav-Ohta and Zimion-Ohta are waiting for you inside.”

“Very good.” He strode towards the hallway with as much confidence as he could muster and didn’t realize his guards were no longer with him until someone pinned his arms to his sides from behind.

He wasn’t entirely surprised, and he didn’t struggle.

The man at the door stood aside, and, true to his word, presented Tarav and Zimion, beaten to shit and in manacles.

Varyta nodded. “Boys.”

“Sssorry,” said Zimion through swollen lips. He spit, and a tooth fell to the floor.

Varyta shook his head. “It’s alright. It’s my fault.”

—

Kivli led her girls towards the western-most entrance to the courtyard around the Avla Oproz with no expectations. If they were the only ones who made it, it would be disappointing, but not surprising.

They’d done their fucking best, anyway.

The last hundred paces to the wall were out in the open: she took off at a run, knowing her girls would follow without instructions. They were an extension of her. What they felt, she felt.

She got to the in-swinging iron gate and pushed it open as quietly as she could, drawing her sword in case of the worst, and saw empty space in front of her—save three bodies, lying twenty yards from the front door of the hall.

No. No, no, no.

She ran to them. Aladi, Omri, and Viri were still bleeding from their cut throats. There were no weapons left anywhere near them.

Fucking vicious, vindictive pieces of—

She heard the main gate, which was rustier than the others, creak as it swung open. Half a dozen men hurried through it in pairs, each holding a prisoner between them.

Varyta was the prisoner between the third pair.

“Swords!” she snapped, then stood and drew her sword and knife. She’d gut the fucking cowards herself.

The men who’d betrayed the Prince picked up their pace as she sprinted the forty or fifty yards between them, and then she heard a deep, furious roar from behind her. “KILL THEM ALL!”

She skidded to a halt and whirled around.

Uskol ul-Sakara and the companies she had ambushed on the western edge had caught up to them.

“SHIELD WALL!” she screamed. She heard the clatter of shields in front of her. “Bows! Loose at will!”

A moment later, she heard the twang of about twenty bows. The rest of the girls were already behind their shields and bracing for close combat. They were ready. Hopefully the archers would slow Uskol’s momentum enough to mitigate the size advantage of the men coming to kill them.

“Shield wall!” she heard him shout. He was right to be cautious. Her girls were all dead shots. His column had already found that out tonight, hadn’t they?

The bows around her twanged again—and then there were hissing sounds coming from behind her and half a dozen grunts of pain from her left and right, and something slammed into her left shoulder from behind.

It was an arrow.

She turned again. Twenty archers were standing just outside the main gate to the courtyard. She cursed in pain and frustration at letting her girls be caught out in the open.

“To the hall!” She heard more hissing sounds and several more of her girls grunted and fell to the ground. Another arrow barely missed her left ear on its way into one of the girls in front of her.

“Fuck! Go! GO!”

—

Kareva had been awake most of the night, since the moment he heard the scream at the front door.

From his bedroll in the loft above the main hall, he had watched silently as Alakuz cut through four men in an instant and rushed to his father’s chamber. Then he heard shouting, and a moment later, he saw his brother scramble out of the hall and into the darkness.

When no one else came back out, he made his way down to his father’s chamber. He saw blood on the floor and the furnishings knocked over and scattered, and realized without having any of the details that his life was about to fundamentally change.

He grabbed his father’s knife from behind the pillows on the bed and tucked it into his belt, then went back into the main hall and up the ladder to wait for whatever was coming next.

Now he heard more screaming outside, and suddenly the hall’s door burst open and the Daughters of Vei streamed through it, disorganized and desperate-looking, and when one of them pointed towards the ladder he hunched down behind a couple of barrels to keep himself out of sight.

Alakuz had been killing their own men, after all. He had no idea who was on whose side.

Better to trust no one.

—

“Will someone please explain to me how, with all of your manpower right outside the main gate, every last one of you somehow neglected to block the door to the fucking hall?” Uskol looked from captain to captain as he spoke, his voice tight with suppressed fury.

“Some of us have already taken heavy losses tonight already, Uskol,” snapped Mikal.

“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? We basically lost two entire fucking companies chasing those little shits down the western path. You had half the fucking tribe with you, and you send twenty archers to dip a fucking toe in the water?”

“Easy, gentlemen,” Georz snarled. “Uskol, the archers were my idea, and they got you and yours out of a little bit of—”

“We would have fucking had her,” interrupted Attala.

Mikal turned to face him and tilted his head. “Sorry, who the fuck are you again? And how many minutes ago did you—“

“Enough.” Georz stepped into the center of the huddle and put a hand on his dagger. “We’re all proud men, here. Let’s not make enemies of each other tonight, shall we?” He looked around the circle. “More than enough of that going around already.”

Edren ul-Edren nodded. “Well fucking said. If I may?”

“Go ahead, Ohta.” Georz stepped backward.

“Let’s start with what we all agree on: we can’t afford to drag this out. Kivli can’t have more than sixty or seventy warriors left in there. We need to go in and finish the job.”

Uskol snorted. “Sure. But what’s the plan? Just knock down the front door?”

“She’ll have her archers up above in the loft,” added Mikal.

Georz shook his head. “I don’t see a way to do this that doesn’t cost us another hundred men at least. It’s a fucking catastrophe.”

“That it is,” nodded Edren. “Not to mention, when the women and children wake up and see what’s been done, we’ve got a whole other problem on our hands.” He spat. “I’m just going to come out and say it: Where the fuck is Metan?”

Georz looked down. “He’s not coming.”

“How is that even—”

“He’s not coming,” spoke a new voice from outside the circle. “We have to handle it ourselves.”

—

Alakuz looked around as the Ohtar he had stumbled upon turned to face him. No one answered him for a moment.

“Do you…speak for him?” asked Edren with a hint of suspicion.

“No. I just got here from his house, though. Varyta-Kogon is expected to survive and recover.”

Two or three of the captains sighed with relief.

Georz crossed his arms and lifted his left hand to rest his chin. “You bring the new recruits?”

“No. Just the last of the bodyguards. Those children are not ready for Kivli. Are the rest of the rebels accounted for?”

“Yeah,” answered Edren. “Unarmed, being guarded by Limava’s boys outside the fortress.”

“The Prince?”

“Back at the Avla Ohtar with his three little friends, in chains.”

“Alright.” Alakuz had worried about leaving the Kogon unprotected, but Metan and his son were with him, and even in the state he was in, the Ra’an Ohtar would not be an easy man to get past. “So it’s just the Daughters in there?”

“Yeah.” Georz was still rubbing his chin. “Let me ask you, you’ve been guarding the hall for months, right?”

“Right.”

“How would you go in?”

“Same way I got the Kogon out earlier. His bedchamber has a window that faces the Sisters’ courtyard.”

“She’ll have that room guarded,” interrupted Edren.

“Of course she will. But there’s no sightline for the archers in the loft until you get into the main room. A smallish group goes in as quickly as they can, and they get a few shields through the window to hold the position until reinforcements can climb in.”

Georz nodded. “Alright, that makes good sense.” There was a pregnant pause. “So, who’s going?” he asked.

Alakuz smirked. “I am, obviously. That was your intention from the beginning, right?” They were never going to stop looking for ways to get rid of him.

Georz didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“It’s fine. In fact, when Metan asks, you can tell him it was my idea—which you were going to do anyway to cover yourself, but you have my blessing.”

Katuz ul-Uzan raised his hand. “You’ll need more than ten men.”

“Ideally, yes.”

“Alright. The T’Kar Kulta will come with you. We owe the Daughters a visit.”

“Very good. The rest of you, just break down that fucking door as soon as you hear it get started.”

Uskol looked at Alakuz for a moment, nodded his respect, and extended an arm. “Until we meet again, Ohta.”

Alakuz took Uskol’s arm. “Until we meet again.”

—

Well. This hasn’t gone according to plan, has it?

Kivli sat at the foot of the same stone chair she had seen in her vision, trying to figure out what she had missed.

Rakili’s voice rang lightly in her ears. Drinking the zok n’ved is not reliable.

She shouldn’t have tried to interpret the vision herself. She could have trusted Rakili with it. Probably. The Priestess was a great many types of pain in the ass, but she wasn’t the type to break confidence.

Outside the hall, the men of the Hodrir were beginning the process of breaking down the front door of their own chieftain’s home to get to her and her girls.

There was no prospect of negotiation. Time was running short, and so was her opportunity to understand the will of her patroness.

Divine one, Mother, please. Tell me what I got wrong.

Maybe nothing. The gods loved chaos, after all. Maybe Vei was just bored after four years of watching her people live peacefully.

A lightning bolt exploded in her skull. She braced herself for one last vision.

—

Next to the Ohta, Sivridi sat sharpening her sword, waiting for the moment to come when she would meet her patroness.

She looked around the room at her sisters: a few of them were embracing, offering one another courage in their final moments. In the corner, Inari and Edrini were staring at each other wordlessly—and then Inari leaned in and kissed Edrini hard, full on the mouth. Edrini threw her arms around Inari’s neck and kissed her back.

Sivridi smirked to herself. Those two were not a good fit for each other. It would probably be even more entertaining to see their predestined catastrophe of a relationship take its course in Vei’s hall—after it soured, she’d get to watch them try to kill each other for the rest of eternity.

But first, they’d have to get there. The thud of the ram against the front door was starting to sound promising.

She looked back down at her sword and went back to work.

—

Alakuz went first. Honor demanded it.

He climbed quietly up into the window, knife in his teeth, and had enough time to set himself before pouncing on the one girl Kivli had set to guard the chamber. He slew her quickly and cleanly, with one stroke of his knife through her throat, and used the other hand to hold her fist closed around her sword-handle while she expired.

However ugly tonight had gotten, it was still only right that the Daughters of Vei go to their mistress.

Two more shieldmaidens walked into the room as he was standing up. He killed the first one quickly, but the second one had the chance to shout an alarm before his sword blade found her.

He turned around. All of Varyta-Kogon’s bodyguards and a few of Katuz ul-Uzan’s company were already in the room. They’d just have to hold the room a little longer, and when the door fell, he would give the order to break out.

And he’d go find Kivli.

—

Kivli was still waiting for the Goddess to show her something when she heard, as if from under water, a voice shout “They’re coming!” from the back of the hall.

As the first men burst into the room she heard her girls screaming their war cries and the clash of sword against sword. Then she heard a crash behind her—the front door bursting open under the impact of her former colleagues’ battering ram—and realized her head was no longer hurting.

She looked down at her shield again.

—