The Last of the Etela, Chapter 4

Morale is low and tensions are running high as Kareva and his warriors head towards Valtaa to make their stand against the northerners.

Previously…Kareva rather impolitely declined to serve the Pohyor, forcing his tribe to prepare for war and say goodbye to their ancestral stronghold.

(A bunch of other things happened, too. Don’t be shy about going back to catch up.)

—

Turan ul-Toruk and his party stood at the base of the mountain. They’d trekked twenty-five miles through the rock and the sand, through two nights and days, planting their grisly signposts in the hope that the enemy would see them and react to them, and now they were finally here, standing at the foot of Valtaa, and all Turan could do was shake his head in horror. 

What a beautiful, terrible place to die. 

Turan looked back at his men, who all looked equally awestruck, but for one. 

“Uskol.”

Uskol ul-Aravan and Uskol ul-Nev answered at once. “Yes, Ohta.”

Turan rolled his eyes. He’d have to stop doing that. “That one’s my fault. I meant Uskol, son of Aravan.”

Uskol ul-Aravan stepped forward. “What can I do for you, Ohta?” 

“You’ve been here before?”

“Yes, Ohta. My old man took me up to the top once when I was a boy.”

“Well, then you’re in charge for the next hour or so. Get us up safely.”

“Yes, Ohta. Oh!” Uskol’s eyes lit up suddenly, and he grinned. “Can I order the other Uskol around a bit, Ohta?”

Turan chuckled in spite of himself. “Yes, but only once we’re up there safely.”

“Yes, Ohta.” 

“And only him.”

Uskol stifled a laugh. “Yes, Ohta.”

An hour later, from the top of the plateau, the thirteen of them looked out in silence over the desert back towards their home and saw a cloud of dust off in the distance that could only be the rest of their comrades coming to join them. And farther away, a dark red spot on the horizon that could only be Kalaa Ukruv'r.

This was the closest any of them would ever get to it ever again. 

Suddenly, not even the Uskols were in a joking mood. 

—

“Shield wall!” shouted Edren ul-Edren. The Kamar brought their training weapons to bear. Wooden swords knocking against shields was never as satsifying a sound as the real thing. 

“SHIELD WALL!” There was a matching wave of clacking sounds from the other side of the makeshift training ground, then the air was thick with shrieks meant to resemble the hunting call of a bird of prey as the Angh-Ner readied themselves to meet Edren’s warband. 

Metan smirked as he walked past them. Mikal ul-Zalan’s need to be louder than anyone else in the tribe had been one of the more annoying features of the past three days. 

But not the most annoying.

All around him, pairs of companies were hammering at each other, trying to keep unit cohesion intact as they added their new recruits. It was going poorly. 

The newly-pardoned soldiers were, with a few notable exceptions, very rusty. It wasn’t so much that they had gotten weaker; most of them had spent their exile trying to scratch out a harvest on the thin grasses just to the north of the fortress or doing the other, equally physical jobs that the tribe’s non-warrior population was tasked with. But an effective shield wall action required exquisite timing. There was a silent cadence to it, special to each company, and each company’s veterans had been working at it together since they came of age. 

That was where the trust came from—not from some declaration of loyalty to a particular Ohta or battle standard, or even to one another, but from the daily grind of having to trust your neighbor not to get you hit in the teeth or belly or balls with a heavy wooden sword. And from knowing that when the swords were real, your neighbor would still be there protecting you.

Trying to sprinkle new recruits into a shield wall in the week before a battle was folly. Metan would have told Kareva that, too, if Kareva had come to ask him about it before giving the order. 

—

Near the center of the clashing shield walls, Sivridi struck another overhead blow, and felt a brief moment of exultation as yet another shield dipped in front of her as the Angh-Ner trainee holding it grimaced. She was still as good as she’d been before, now that she’d had a chance to knock the rust off of herself.

But none of her comrades’ swords found their way into the breach. 

She fumed. Another missed opportunity.

“Come on, you bastards! I’m laying them open for you!”

The Kamar veterans to either side of her said nothing, pretended not to hear her, and suddenly one of their shields dropped to leave her open to an Angh-Ner trainee’s wooden saif.

She turned just in the nick of time and the blow glanced off her shoulder. She gritted her teeth to stave off the pain and felt her rage building up to uncontrollable levels.

To hell with this.

She swung her training sword again, harder, hitting the same Angh-Ner warrior again between his neck and his shoulder. This time he went down completely, and a hole opened in their line, and she kicked her left foot out to smash into her two neighbors’ shields and let her dance through that opening into the soft second line of the enemy wall. 

And then she was everywhere at once. Four more Angh-Ner were on the ground before any of them could react to her sudden presence, and now a few more of the Kamar would be free to come through after her, and that would break the Angh-Ner line completely and win them the exercise…

Except no one was coming. Sivridi turned back to see her new comrades in arms, looking at her in stony silence, perfectly content to watch her get the shit beaten out of her simply for not being one of them. And suddenly the hole in the Angh-Ner line closed around her, leaving her alone facing twelve men she’d spent most of the morning hammering into the ground one at a time. They all grinned wolfishly at the prospect of payback. She snarled and threw herself into one of them with inch-perfect control, spun and parried a second’s best attack, then hit the third of them in the jaw with her saif before the fourth caught her with a massive blow across the back of her shoulders, knocking her into the ground and sending her weapon flying a few feet away into the sand.

She looked up and saw a fifth winding up to kick her in the ribs, rolled away in time to avoid the full impact and heard him curse as his big toe collided painfully with her hip. Then she was up on her feet again, unarmed and definitely the worse for wear, but ready for whatever was coming next—

“Hold!” 

Sivridi fell to one knee, breathing heavily. She couldn’t tell which captain had called it.

“That was an embarrassment!” she heard from the other side of the shield-wall. Edren-Ohta was screaming at someone.

“This company has been fighting in shield walls since before the Traitor’s balls dropped! If, by some fucking miracle, a hole opens in the enemy’s shield wall, what do you do?” 

Oh, good. The Ohta is berating my linemates in front of the whole company. That will do wonders for my popularity. Sivridi didn’t hear their response but imagined they had answered correctly. Not that it would do them (or her) any good.

“That’s right. YOU PUSH THROUGH AND WIDEN THE HOLE! WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU TWO THINKING? All of you, back to your positions. We’re going again!”

Without even waiting for their own Ohta to confirm the order, the Angh-Ner line opened back up in front of her to let her through. She stood and walked back towards her people, running smack into Edren-Ohta. She snapped into a salute and locked eyes with her captain.

“You went through the enemy line by yourself.”

Damn right, she had. And she would not apologize for it. “Yes, Ohta.”

He looked at her balefully. “You’re not in the Daughters of Vei anymore, soldier. Work with your partners.”

Suddenly every place she’d been hit that day seemed to hurt much worse. Her eyes dropped to her feet. “Yes, Ohta.”

—

In another shield wall a few hundred feet away, one company was gelling much faster than any of the others.

Kareva stood at the center of Turan’s company; he and Alakuz had been alternating leading them in drills while the young Ohta was away on his special assignment. They were so green they didn’t have a standard yet: this upcoming battle would be their first. In training, however, their youth and inexperience almost seemed to be an advantage to them, though Kareva wasn’t entirely sure why. They were certainly more open to instruction, according to Alakuz. And the incentive to impress the chieftain up close was certainly helping. 

Across from them stood Uskol ul-Sakara’s Dazvar-Muz, the “black shields,” one of the more experienced companies in the tribe. Uskol-Ohta looked tense; the younger, hungrier new boys had been making his veterans look terrible all morning.

“Work together, damn you! Those children over there have been kicking your asses all over this desert.” 

Kareva looked left and right and saw the new confidence and determination in the faces of his linemates. “Come on, boys! Let’s show these old bastards what’s what! SHIELD WALL!”

The companies crashed together again, and the exuberant youngsters’ cooperation again got the better of the frustrated, disjointed mess of hardened veterans and rusty re-treads in front of them…

Briefly an idea floated into his mind. Maybe that’s the problem?

Then it disappeared, just as swiftly, as the joy of battle rose up in him. He saw the blackshields’ line break again, and he leapt into the breach, wooden sword whirling, dealing painful but ultimately harmless blows to every Dazvar-Muz who came across his path…

And then suddenly she was there in front of him, holding his sword against hers. Taravi. Her green eyes shone with bloodlust as she lunged forward at him, driving him backwards even as the rest of her linemates fell back in disarray. His men parted to give them space. He parried three strokes, then spun around her and aimed a lightning-fast cut at the back of her neck. She was ready for it, parried it with more force than he was expecting, and neatly rapped the left side of his mouth with her next stroke while his sword-arm was rerouting itself. He reeled backwards, tasting blood in his mouth, and barely parried her next stroke. 

Then she was on the ground. Had she tripped on something? No, someone else had stepped in on his behalf...who the hell would do that? He saw the man behind her with an ugly smirk on his face, noticed his shield was blackened, and put two and two together at the exact moment she rose, face contorted with rage, and dealt the man a vicious blow across the face with the flat of her wooden sword.

He went down like a sack of bricks, and suddenly four more men had thrown themselves at Taravi, and a few more moved to pull them off, and suddenly all the Dazvar-Muz were brawling amongst themselves. 

It wasn’t difficult to guess who was on what side.

Kareva’s own warriors stepped back, uncertain of what to do. Uskol-Ohta looked positively mortified. He was right to. This was disgraceful.

Kareva dropped his wooden saif and drew his father’s sword. Then he stepped towards his captain. “Uskol-Ohta, draw your sword.”

“Oproz, I…”

“Your sword! NOW!”

Uskol ul-Sakara, fearing the worst, sighed deeply then drew his sword. 

The chieftain’s sword clashed against it. 

“THAT’S ENOUGH!” 

Uskol added his own deep bullhorn of a voice to the racket. “HOLD!”

The harsh alarum had the desired effect. The combatants who were standing all dropped to one knee, and everyone froze.

Kareva looked out over them all. There were some black eyes, a few loosened teeth, and at least a few men prone on the ground having a hard time getting up. The sand was littered with darkly-stained shields and wooden swords. 

The silence was thick. The other companies had noticed the disturbance and stopped what they were doing. 

The Oproz walked out into the middle of the fray, sword and dagger still drawn. “I should have you all flogged. Every last one of you.”

The Dazvar-Muz stayed kneeling, heads down, not daring to move.

“Hell, maybe we should all just kill ourselves right now, instead of fighting this battle! We’re clearly about to disgrace ourselves, aren’t we?”

Kareva paused, and looked around until he found the man he was looking for, the one who had struck Taravi.

He dipped his sword down and laid the point under the man’s chin. 

“You. On your feet.”

“Oproz, I—”

“Silence. You struck a member of your own company in combat, while her back was turned. You weakened your own unit because of your own personal feelings.” He lifted the blade up higher, pricking the man’s neck and drawing a drop of blood. “Do you know what crime you have committed?”

“Tr-...treason, Oproz.” The soldier was still struggling to get to his feet without impaling himself on Kareva’s sword-point.

“Correct. Well said. What is the punishment for treason?”

To his credit, the man did not waver this time. “Death, Oproz.” He paused for a moment. Then a different voice said, “Most of the time.” The man’s eyes lifted from the blade under his chin to lock with Kareva’s. They were someone else’s eyes. 

Kareva started, incredulous. “What did you say?” he whispered.

The specter grinned wickedly.  “I said…”

Then, just as quickly, it was gone, its face replaced with the stunned visage of the soldier, who was suddenly coughing up blood. 

—

From her place on the ground two feet away, Taravi watched the Oproz pull his sword from the dying man’s chest and step away from him as he fell. He looked around at the rest of the Dazvar-Muz still kneeling in front of him.

“Get up. All of you.”

Taravi stood with the others. Kareva-Oproz wiped his sword on his robe and sheathed it. Then he raised his voice again, for the benefit of the disturbingly large audience the incident had attracted.

“Training is over for the day. Pack up camp and be ready to march for the mountain in one hour.”

Their eyes met briefly as he passed. He looked more shaken up than angry…and Taravi was almost certain she’d heard him mutter something to himself before he killed Aravan ul-Nev.

He reminded her a little bit of Kivli. Not in a good way.

—

Kareva was keenly aware of the eyes of every warrior in the tribe on him as he walked back towards his tent. Alakuz appeared next to him.

“What the hell happened?”

Kareva picked up the pace. “When everyone is ready to march, I want a word with all the Ohtar. Their companies will stand at attention, and may the gods help them all if anyone so much as twitches. And the captains will come to me.”

Alakuz let him go. “Yes, Oproz.”

—

One hundred paces behind the rest of the tribe, Kareva’s captains stood in a half-circle around him at attention. Alakuz stood to Kareva’s left.

“Help me understand what is going wrong. Were my instructions not clear enough?” Alakuz saw Kareva doing his level best to keep his voice quiet. Alakuz had spent six years teaching Kareva the importance of control: control of body, of weapon, of mind. Control of a crowd, of a situation. He must not lose it here, so soon after the circus with the northern envoy—and whatever the hell had just happened on the training ground. 

His eyes darted to Uskol ul-Sakara, whose face betrayed nothing. 

“We are about to fight the battle of our lives, and your companies are disintegrating in training exercises! I’m not laying all of the blame on you, either. Your regulars have a responsibility to bring their new linemates up to speed, bind them to their compan—”

“Oproz, my veterans have no interest in bonding with those they consider traitors.” 

Alakuz rolled his eyes. Of course it was Georz ul-Zimion who had interrupted.

“They don’t know why your father let the pehtur live after they rebelled. They don’t know why you pardoned them now. They don’t trust them to have their backs in a fight. They are particularly distressed at the presence of the last three Daughters of Vei in our ranks—women who killed many of their friends and relatives the last time they held weapons.” Georz took a step forward towards his chieftain. “What did you think would happen? Did you think old wounds would heal on a whim? That old feuds would simply be ended? That old blood-debts would be forgiven simply because you gave an order?”

Alakuz’s hand went to his dagger instinctively. Kareva seemed to feel it happen: he reached out to gently stop his mentor’s next move. He was in control.

Alakuz dropped his hand to his side, relieved.

Kareva took a step into the semi-circle, and then a second step into Georz ul-Zimion’s personal space. “Yes. That is exactly what will happen. I am the Oproz, and my word is law. If you can’t enforce it, I will have no choice but to see that as a challenge to my authority.” He still spoke softly, evenly, but there was no mistaking his fury. The older Ohta was clearly dancing on the knife’s edge, and he knew it. Georz took one step back. Kareva looked around the circle at the rest of his Ohtar.  “Make it very clear to all of your soldiers that they are on the same side. They will act like it, or they will die in disgrace and forfeit their chance to join the gods.”

—

The sun was still high, and the weather still blazing hot, when the rest of the army arrived at the base of the mountain. That struck Turan as odd; considering everything they had to transport, wouldn’t it have made sense to travel later in the day, when it was cooler?

He recognized the situation right away when he saw the looks on the faces of his company as they marched past: the soldiers were being punished for something. Then he noticed that there were several faces among them that didn’t belong to him. He called out to one he did recognize as his own.

“Uzan! Uzan ul-Isav!”

The spearman looked up, recognized his commander, and saluted in silence, almost surreptitiously. 

Something was very wrong.

“Uskol ul-Aravan,” he muttered to the man standing at attention behind him.

“Yes, Ohta.” Uskol answered quietly, taking his cue from his leader’s tone.

“Find out why everyone looks so damn miserable and report back to me.” Uskol nodded and made to join the troops. Turan’s hand found his shoulder and stopped his progress. “And find out why there are more men in our company than there were when we left.”

—

Three men with clean-shaven heads fell on their knees in front of Kareva, hands tied behind their back. Six of their comrades, who were also bald-headed, had escorted them at spear-point. 

Kaljur. Georz ul-Zimion’s men. Damn him.

“What have they done?” Kareva’s voice was even quieter than it had been during his talk with the Ohtar. Alakuz felt nervousness competing for space in his chest with his anger. 

“Started in on a few of the peh—sorry, some of the new men in the company, Oproz. Ten or twelve men total got into it with each other before the fight was broken up, but these three started the trouble.”

Kareva got down onto one knee in front of the middle of the three prisoners. “Did your Ohta tell you what would happen if you picked a fight with the warriors I pardoned?”

“Yes, Oproz.”

“Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

The condemned man stared into Kareva’s eyes with more defiance than Alakuz was comfortable with.

“No, Oproz.”

Kareva looked left and right at the other two. “How about you two? Anything you want to tell me?”

The one on the left turned his head slightly—away from the Oproz—and spat out some blood. “Respectfully, Oproz, you are siding with serpents. They betrayed your father, then they betrayed your brother, and before this is over…”

Kareva stood and turned away. He grabbed three long spears out of a pile lying nearby. He looked up at the six men who’d brought their comrades to face justice. “Follow me. Bring them along.”

The small procession walked down the mountain, Kareva out front, Alakuz bringing up the rear, the three condemned men and their six guards in the middle. 

At the bottom of the mountain, Kareva dropped two of his pikes and spun the last one around in his hands so that the point faced the sand. His face was a mask of concentrated fury as he thrust down with all the force he could muster.

The spear-point disappeared into the ground. The handle vibrated slightly as he let it go.

The Oproz grabbed the next spear and slammed it into the sand three paces from the first. Then he did the third. He looked up at his audience.

“Bring them over here. And tie them high.”

The guards did their chieftain’s bidding. The three condemned men said nothing; there was clearly no point. When their hands had all been secured above their heads, Kareva looked in all three of their faces, then turned away to walk back up the path. 

Alakuz could hardly believe it. 

Neither, apparently, could one of the guards. “Oproz, a boon.”

Kareva whirled around. “What?”

“A kindness, Oproz.” The guard that had spoken up swallowed hard. “They are Hodrir. At least make it quick.”

Kareva drew his knife and walked back towards the guard. Alakuz held his breath, terrified of what was about to happen.

After a second, Kareva snarled, “Granted,” and walked past the guard towards the condemned to speed their way to oblivion. 

—

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Georz. You need to do a better job keeping your men in line.”

Back at the top of Valtaa, Alakuz had found the man he was looking for. It was time to put him in his place. 

“Let’s not do this right now, Ohta.”

“When should we do it? When a few of your men kill each other? Before or after I have to haul your ass in front of the Oproz and let him string you up for mutiny?”

Georz was in his face in a heartbeat. “You have a lot of nerve, Alakuz. It’s one thing to play politics with me in front of all the Ohtar. I would do the same thing, in your position. But to question my loyalty in private? I followed his orders to the letter. I just handed over three of my veteran warriors, good men—men I’ve led for more than fifteen years—for disobeying his command. What more do you expect of me? What the hell am I supposed to do?” He brushed past Alakuz to make his way back to his men.

Alakuz’s voice stopped him in his tracks. 

“I’m sorry, Georz.”

The older man’s head whipped around. “What?” He looked flabbergasted.

Alakuz was also having a hard time believing those words had just come out of his mouth, but he pressed on. “I—I let our mutual dislike color my judgment. It led me to mistake your intentions and question your loyalty. I have wronged you. I beg your forgiveness.” He bowed his head. “Avzaka-min.”

It took Georz ul-Zimion a minute to recover from his surprise. He turned, hesitantly, back towards this son of Nev that fate had made his commander. He could not detect any disingenuity in the younger man’s words or posture, try as he might. 

For the moment, he decided he wanted to trust him. 

And even if he didn’t, it would be foolish and dangerous not to accept his apology.

“You are an honorable man, Ohta. You have my respect. I am at your service.”

He held out his arm, and Alakuz took it. “I am grateful for that. I will find an appropriate way to show it.”

Georz nodded. 

—

“You have a problem.”

Kareva recognized Metan’s voice behind him. He turned away from the edge of the plateau towards his father’s oldest friend. “I have many problems.”

“They won’t fight together.”

“They have to.”

Metan took a step closer and put a hand on the chieftain’s shoulder. “This is one of those times when you need to shut up and listen to your teachers. You’ve never commanded a warband in battle before, have you?”

Kareva rolled his eyes in frustration. “You know I haven’t.”

“Alakuz taught you to fight. And he has done an incredible job. You may be better with a sword and a knife than anyone here, except for him. But you’ve never commanded men. And beyond the confidence they need to have in their commander, they need to have confidence in their neighbors. These men, the veterans?” he gestured towards the tents set up on the plateau, “Most of them fought against your brother’s rebels. They saw the pehtur surrender—saw them betray your brother and put the rest of Varyta’s company to the sword, too, by the way, before they handed him over—and they can’t help but think to themselves, ‘How can we trust men like that when they’re standing next to us in line?’ That trust can’t be forced, even in the best of circumstances. It comes from years of standing next to each other, killing enemies, taking wounds, losing friends, learning from their mistakes. It comes with time.”

“Which we don’t have.”

Metan nodded. “Which we don’t have. Not to mention, they haven’t fought a genuine battle in six years. It’s too much to ask of them all at once.”

“So what do I do, Uncle?”

“Well, for starters, you can stop executing them for stupid little punch-ups amongst themselves.” Metan chuckled. “Because maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like I remember hearing someone say, ‘We need every last able-bodied warrior we can get our hands on…’”

Kareva laughed in spite of himself. “You’re a pain in my ass.”

Metan gripped Kareva’s shoulder tighter to get his attention. “And you need to split them back up. I’ll lead the pehtur myself. I’m the one who recommended keeping them alive in the first place. I’ll be responsible for them.”

“That’s almost three whole companies worth of men.”

“So what? I led your father’s entire army for twenty years. This is child’s play.”

Kareva thought for a second. “The pardoned men are fitting in fine in Turan ul-Toruk’s company.”

“With the youngsters? That’s fine. Leave those men there. Good to have some experience mixed in with the new blood, anyway. The rest can fall in with me.”

“Even the Daughters?”

Metan grinned. “They’re mad creatures, aren’t they? You should have seen the havoc they could wreak when there were a hundred of them. The northerners wouldn’t stand a chance. Every day I sat in that alley, I wished I had promoted anyone but fucking Kivli.”

“So, you’ll take them, then?”

“Absolutely. Though they might be more useful held in reserve, for if things look to be going wrong…”

—

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The Last of the Etela: Table of Contents

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