"Come on, man!" Haron urged him. "You gotta tell us!"
Tenae closed his eyes, scrunched his lips, and shook his head.
Kaye was showing Josha the white bat's wing tattoo on his dark skin when he lifted his yellow eyes to me. "ʒɪ gæðu ŋuve?"
I translated for him. "He asks that Tenae tells him that story that first time that he kills the enemy."
"Ahh! yʊpidaxa!" And he looked up at Tenae expectantly.
Tenae waved his hands and looked away.
"Come on man," Rolon tapped his shoulder. "You been out there runnin' ops. We know you killed a man out there."
"Ya gotta tell us," Haron insisted. "You're on my team out there, I gotta know!"
Tenae clenched his jaw. His chest lifted up from a deep breath.
Thirteen of us cowered in a triangle of shade beneath the dried-mud walls of Ta'o's apartment block. Beside us, in the open, the Terrible Sun assaulted the world with fire and brimstone from the sky. Just breathing in, even in the shade, my lungs felt like they were burning.
"I have an idea!" I stood, leaving a dark spot where I'd leaned against the mud wall behind me. "Here's the agreement:"
Haron narrowed his dark-green eyes at me. The cougar brand on his shoulder glistened with sweat along with the bear claw scar half-hidden beneath his bow strap. Tenae locked his gaze upon me as well. He had the same pitch-black eyes as Sarina, same warm yellow skin and bronze-black hair in tight curls. Unlike Sarina, he had the number 858-471 burned onto each arm.
Father Yewan taught me this trick. "Haron, you go first. Something you've never told anyone. Something you wouldn't think to tell anyone. And Tenae, you decide what that's worth in terms of what you're willing to share."
Everyone sat up to listen. Haron thought about it.
"I'll go first!" Renou leaned his back against the dried mud wall. He looked up with a smirk in my direction. "We're already dead anyway, right?"
That felt warm. That felt real warm, and I liked it.
"One time, when I was away at my grandparents' house in the country, I had to go to the pit, and I saw a mouse in there. He was just there floating in shit, and those little black eyes looked up at me. And I peed on him. I don't know why. Something… I aimed right at him and I pissed all over his little face. He tried to swim out of the way, but I just… and then I left. I don't know why I did that. Sometimes I can still see his tiny face staring up at me. I think about that someti—"
"Bro, what the hell?" Ta'o emerged from behind us. He looked like a proper warrior, with a polished-leather bow sling over one shoulder and a pressed, plain cotton yithi with a little green ear embroidered in one corner. "Where have you guys been?"
"Waitin' for you!" Haron barked.
"Everybody is waiting," Ta'o said. "Let's go!"
He led us around the open posts marking the vita'o yard to the massive stone arch of the main gate.
The other five teams had all gathered together. Dax, Finn, Kurt, Bilal, and Ta'o all stood with their men, all of them glistening beneath the horrid sun and glaring at us when we joined them. Ahmi had an infant asleep in her arms with one tiny hand clinging to a lock of feral white hair curtained over her shoulders. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head at us. The three students I'd met the other day were there. The one with the blue left eye held one hand over her face like a visor and scowled at me.
In the center of it all, three lizards paced the ground on their hind legs. One of them was the gray one, Niraq. He promptly tapped his snout on my chest and squawked.
Immediately, another vita'o stepped forward. This one was a dull-yellow color with dark-brown spots along her back and a tuft of hair beneath her chin. She walked among the captains and sniffed each of them one after the other. And then she circled the whole group again.
Then she squawked and chirped, and went around and sniffed them in the opposite order.
While that was going on, Niraq strode among my team, sniffing each of us. A green bird with a large, hooked bill perched on his neck. The bird… spoke. "zawa!"
It had a high, squeaky voice, and it definitely spoke. "zawa," I said back. "You're a talking bird!"
The bird fluttered its green wings and twisted its head. "You're a talking human!"
"Oh, what the?" Rolon rushed up to the thing. "A talking bird?"
"You're a talking human!"
"What's it like bein' a bird, man? I never—"
"You're a talking human!" The creature squawked, nibbled at its claws, inched a few steps down along the lizard's neck, and stretched out its wings.
Tenae asked the bird in Uhuida. "What you—"
"You're a talking human!"
Rolon tried again. "But—"
"You're a talking human!"
"Is tha—"
"You're a talking human!"
Tenae held his hand out. He stepped close to the bird and stared at it. The bird shook its feathers and brushed its beak beneath one wing.
We all waited. Tenae held one finger to his lips and grinned. The bird bobbed its head up and down, cracked its beak open and turned one eye towards him. Finally, after a good while, he said, "do you—"
"You're a talking human!" And the bird squawked.
Niraq coiled his neck around to face the creature.
"You're a talking human!"
The lizard spoke a string of whistles and clicks.
The bird launched from his neck, flew over to Dayumi, and perched on a braid of her white hair. "You're a talking human!"
Dayumi had two black dogs, the same kind that tried to rip my leg off, at her feet. One of them stood on all fours, eagerly watching with lines of slobber dripping from his mouth and his tail wagging behind him. The other sat in the dry grass scratching one ear with his hind leg.
Eventually, the bearded vita'o tapped Finn's chest.
The third vita'o was Invisible. She sprinted at Ta'o, tapped his chest, raced to Bilal, tapped his chest, and darted to the student with the blue left eye. ɣʊŋi mounted the creature, glanced between her two chosen captains, "Let's go!" and hurried out the gate with two lines of men behind her.
Tenae followed the other teams to the gate and watched them cross the field.
In the shade, by the way. In the shade of the wall beside the gate, he watched them. I take it back—it was not hot when we arrived.
The yellow one started back around. She had to choose between Dax's and Kurt's teams. After going back and forth between them three times over, it was clear this was going to take a while.
Browsing through Kurt's team, she stopped at none other than Rolf Foot-In-My-Arse, coiled her neck up, and hissed at him.
"Oh, piss off!" he crossed his arms and frowned.
That green bird perched in Dayumi's hair called out in its loud, squeaky voice, "Ahmi's not looking!"
Dayumi froze in place. Her whole body was stiff, her eyes were wide, and she stared blankly ahead.
"Ahmi's not looking!"
Ahmi pursed her lips and cocked an eyebrow at the girl. The infant in her arms turned his head and pawed at her breast. She cradled him in both arms, stuffed a teat in his mouth, and went back to glaring at Dayumi.
The yellow lizard was browsing Dax's team when Haron left to stand with Tenae in the shade beside the main gate. Turic, Rolon, and Renou followed, and soon all of us had crouched in the relative comfort of the stone wall beside us while the other two teams mumbled curses at the indecisive lizard. She eventually came to Cutthroat, sniffed him closely, and tapped Dax's chest.
The young Goloagi student mounted the yellow lizard, and Finn's and Dax's teams followed her out the gate. Finn showed me a practice arrow on his way out. "Got yer name on this one, man!"
"You wish!"
Dayumi climbed on top of Niraq, but before we could head out, a man on Kurt's team raised a hand. "Guys, I gotta take a shit. Anyone else need to before we head out…"
And about a third of the men on both our teams followed him.
Outside the gate, Ghuni's men had long entered the cool shade of the jungle, while Talía marched with hers beneath the furnace.
"Alright," Rolon 'Piss-Connoisseur' tapped Tenae's arm. "So I guess it's my turn, yeah? One time, my step-dad was telling us all about where he grew up. He's Zanali, that's around Piandrass, that's where this guy is from," he gestured to Ajak. "He said where he grew up, they got these huge massive herds of bison, like thousands of bison, and they just roam the plains. And his people used to follow them and hunt them, riding these creatures called mustangs and shit, and that was how they lived. So you have these tent thingies and you just live there, and sleep there, and everything, and I just can't picture it. Like where do you poop? 'Cause they don't got a pit, you know? Do you just wipe in the grass or something? Do you find a creek? What if there's no creek or nothing?"
Tenae watched the man speak with his brow furrowed.
Niraq chirped and let out a long, guttural string of clicks, followed by a barking noise. One of the black dogs stopped licking his balls and rushed over to me with his tail flapping left and right.
"His name is Tamu," Dayumi beamed.
"Tamu?" I said. "Like the breakfast thing with the…"
"Yes," she nodded with a big smile.
Tamu trotted over to Tenae first. The Umeazi offered a hand for him to smell, and Tamu licked it.
"We get a dog for this?" Rolon knelt low and scratched behind his ears. "I never had a dog before. I always wanted one. My step dad hated dogs. He never said why. I always thought it was because they chew on things. Also they make a lot of noise and some people don't like a lot of noise. There was this one time, me and Aydel made our own water organ, and we was plinkin' jars so loud the landlord started bitchin' about it. I think we broke one. And he came in, and he just lost it, like he was furious, man. Got the belt for that. I always daydream that one day I'll get my own place, and kids can be as loud as they supposed to be without some pesky landlord to ruin everything. Oh, but we got her back! One time she was cookin', and we snuck some hardis root in her stew, and she had diarrhea for weeks, man, it was great! There was this other time we caught some locusts, and we let 'em out in her vegetable garden. She deserved it, though. Racist cunt."
Tenae eyed the man with a half-grin across his lips. After a moment he shook his head and watched the other teams march across the field.
Eventually, all the men who'd gone to relieve themselves came back, and Dayumi sat atop Niraq, looking over us. "This is good! I have a plan!"
Niraq squawked and clicked twice.
"Yes I do, be quiet!"
The squeaky voice on her shoulder answered. "Be quiet!"
"That's right!" she cooed, "you tell him to be quiet."
"Be quiet!" The bird nuzzled its beak in her face, gently nibbling her nose, and she led us out.
But while Kurt's team followed her, I stopped my men at the gate.
Tamu's feet pattered across the wooden drawbridge, and he stopped on the other side. His ears flopped down, and he looked at us, swishing his tail back and forth.
I addressed my men. "I want your unquestioning obedience. dowade ɣʊ vʌ koŋata ʃa ki'asʌsedu."
Kaye furrowed his brow. Haron tried to answer. "What the hell—"
"No argument." I looked at him especially. "Before we pass through this gate, and after we get back, argue. Make your case, protest, shout, hurl insults, cuss me out, punch me in the face if you have to. But outside this gate, if I say we go this way, we go this way. If I say gobble like a turkey, be the best damned turkey you can be. Any questions?"
Haron squinted back with one eyebrow cocked.
"Any questions?" I repeated, a little more forcefully.
"No." The word left Haron's lips with a great deal of hesitation. The rest of them were silent.
And so we began the long march of misery, across a thousand yards of dried grass that crunched under our boots with the river shimmering in the distance. Every time I tried to copy Kaye and the other natives and curtain my hair over my shoulders, it fell straight down my back instead.
Tamu ran ahead like it was nothing. That dog raced across the field, back to us, then back across the field again and back to us again. Josha found a stick and threw it for him. Tamu raced after it, picked it up, and ran in another direction, only to drop it and investigate something in the ground. Then, as the kid approached him, he took up the stick and ran in the opposite direction.
Tenae had pulled a cotton scarf from his pack and draped it over his head. His pitch-black eyes followed the ground before him, and he said nothing.
"I'll go next," Montus strode beside him. He took a few deep breaths; the exhaustion of walking in the heat wore on all of us. "I deliberately failed my exams to get into the Academy."
"What?" Aydel's eyes went wide.
Montus took a few more steps before explaining. "My dad… he's an architect. He's…" he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "He was always pushing. Always… never happy about anything. I don't know, man. I don't know what I was thinking, either, I was just really, really pissed off at him."
"So you failed it on purpose?" Aydel's jaw was open.
"Yeah, man!" Montus chuckled. "And a lot of those questions were so… I'm telling you, that was hard picking the wrong answer, you're looking at the right one and it's a reflex."
"And to think," I added, "if you'd been accepted, you wouldn't be here!"
Montus sneered at me.
Geraln didn't complete his application; he'd passed all the exams, but procrastinated on his essay. Then his conscription papers arrived.
By the time we reached the forest's edge, all the other teams had disappeared into the jungle, and I could see in my mind another unit waiting behind the bushes for us to come within range. We stopped about sixty yards short, watched, and listened.
Whistles were muted. The usual cacophony of chirps, calls, and squawks was dominated by the steady grinding of insects. What little wind there was brushed its fingers through the trees and blasted us with heat.
Tamu barked twice. Niraq stepped out to greet him, and Dayumi called out, "come on!"
We filed after her. She looked us over and held a finger to her lips.
"Be quiet!" The bird on her shoulder screeched. Loudly.
All around, the ground was littered with dried leaves and palm branches with ferns shooting up from the cracks. Leaves were wilted, curled in, and some were overtaken by some dark moss. Lances of sunlight cast shifting shadows all through the jungle. Sticks and dried branches cracked beneath our feet, a herald of our presence.
Something stirred on my right.
My heart jumped. I raised my bow and saw nothing. One of the other teams could have been hiding somewhere in the light-speckled shadows not thirty yards from us and we wouldn't know until it was too late. Dayumi rushed ahead of us, somewhere.
We came to a steep embankment beside a giant boulder with more ferns growing out of dried, brown moss throughout. To our right, a fallen tree was propped up by two others, and all along the trunk was brown, dried, shriveled-up ferns. To our left, Niraq sniffed the air.
Again I jumped. I should have known they were there.
Dayumi pointed off towards the direction beyond the fallen tree, through a thick grove of palm leaves blooming from the ground. "Dax went that way."
"How do you know it's not a trap?" Haron asked.
Niraq ground his throat, and Dayumi pursed her lips. "Of course it's a trap! We go around this way and sneak up from behind."
"No," Tenae shook his head. "I watch, eh… other. He go… eh…" he switched to Goloagi. "That other guy on his team entered the forest further to our left. They're using one of them as bait."
Niraq gave out a line of muted squawks and whistles.
Dayumi nodded. "OK. Wait here." And they disappeared. Tamu followed for a few yards, stopped, turned back, and meandered around the forest with his nose to the ground.
About ten yards to our left was a patch of particularly dense foliage with fallen logs on one side that looked somewhat more defensible than the rest of the place. Overhead, there was no siren bird, but some monkey-looking creature high in the trees chattered all manner of noises at us.
"Over there," I said. "Everyone walk around in the area, about fifty yards, then—"
"Make a scent bomb?" Haron offered.
"Yup."
"Hold on," Renou pointed to the giant boulder beside the embankment. "Why don't we scent this area, and wait up there?"
"Yeah!" Several men agreed.
It offered a commanding view of the surrounding jungle but cover was sparse, and all along the embankment, sunlight dappled through the upper canopy, bathing the forest floor in a patchwork of light that would have negated our ability to see into the shadier low ground. "Down here is fine."
"Is more good!" Tenae pointed.
"Stay down here," I said.
"But…"
"Come on, now, there'll be none of that!" Haron slapped his shoulder and grinned. "Let us not forget the agreement!"
Slowly, reluctantly, Tenae clenched his jaw, shifting his teeth left and right before turning back to the others.
We took a few minutes to walk around. Renou wiped the sweat from his brow, from his back and his chest and flung it all over. Others saw that and copied him, and before long we'd saturated the area in scent before hiding in the dense bushes.
"Haron, Montus, Kaye, Tenae, you take the first watch…"
Kaye raised a hand. "Why don't we all keep watch?"
"Wait, can I?" Daemon raised a hand and tried in his best Uhuida. "Because lazy. Spin, spin, spin."
Kaye squinted at him. "Huh?"
Tenae chuckled. "Need energy to keep watch, great cost. Grow tired and lazy. To fix this, we rotate after a short time."
And so we settled down. The heavy shade was a nice respite from the punishing open field, and I took off my boots to dry the sweat from my toes. Beside me, Turic the Big Fat Guy did the same, only as soon as he put one boot down, Tamu snatched it on his jaws.
"Hey!" Turic grabbed it and tried to tug it away. The dog growled and tugged back, and the two of them fought for his boot.
"You're too loud!" I whispered.
"ŋevosa!" Kaye exclaimed. He stood beside a bush that was almost as tall as he was. The leaves were long, straight, and hung down all over, and he held a few in his hand.
"What is that?" Vayance asked.
Kaye turned to him with a big smile. "Eh… git… gi… ge, get high."
He was supposed to be watching the jungle.
"What's this?" Turic's eyes went wide. He surrendered his boot to the dog and joined Kaye beside the shrub, looking it over with eyes wide. "What… what does it do?"
"Eh… is like…"
"Can we take some?"
"Yes, we take." And they began pulling leaves from the plant.
"No," I commanded them. "We leave it here."
"But—"
"No argument. I said no. End of discussion."
"Yes, man!" Haron rested his hand on my shoulder with a grin. "That is the rule, or don't you remember? We're not allowed to argue with him out here, we all heard him say that. That's the rule, and it's a good rule! I, for one, fully support this rule! So let us all abide in this rule!"
He, too, was supposed to be watching the jungle.
I took the second shift with Ajak, Renou, and Aydel. Ajak needed a few hand gestures to understand what to do, but he took one corner and looked out with his bow ready and an arrow nocked.
My corner was beside a black, desiccated stump that was taller than me, but I had a clean view over a swath of jungle where the floor had been overtaken by dark-green, hardened ferns giving a respectable arc for a good distance. To one side, tiny, iridescent flies buzzed around what looked like a long, snake-like fruit that smelled of something fermented.
Behind me, Tenae spoke. His voice was strong and steady and had a smooth cadence. "My fust kill."
His deep-black eyes fixed on the ground before him. All of us leaned in to hear him. Including myself, and I was supposed to be watching the jungle.
"Is boss."
"Boss?" Turic asked. "What boss?"
Tenae held his hands out. "Eh… slave boss. Is was night we escape. Me and Kaijou."
"Who's Kaijou?" Renou asked.
"My brutha," he said. "Eh… I arm his neck. Like this."
He held up one toned, muscular arm, bent at the elbow close to his body with a tiny hole where the man's head would have gone. "Is was my yʊpidaxa."
Everyone was silent after that. Tamu laid down in the leaves and chewed Turic's boot.
Suddenly the dog lifted his head and woofed, and a squeaky voice called from a branch above us. "pʊ yudase!"
Tamu dropped Turic's slobbery boot and raced into the trees. A moment later, the gray vita'o emerged carrying Dayumi on his back. She faced Tenae directly. "You are correct. I found Finn's team, they are waiting to ambush you. I sent Kurt behind them. Follow my trail. Oh—"
Her eyes found the plant Kaye had showed us. "ŋevosa! Hehehehe!"
Niraq squawked, curled his neck up to her, and hissed.
"I am focused!" She turned to me, "this way!" and they vanished through twigs and withered leaves.
We followed her trail to a mud bed with a dry, narrow path through the center and came to a section where everything was covered in a vine with large, round leaves. It crawled over trees, branches, bushes, and choked everything around. Overhead, blue sky and heat of the midday sun blasted the forest all around us. Thick trees lined the space beyond the vine, thick enough to hide an ambush party well within range.
Her trail led straight through it.
Tenae rested his hand on my chest. "This has to be a trap!"
Tamu ran ahead, stopped, and looked back at us with his ears flopped down and tail swishing back and forth.
"Possibly." We all crouched low. "She's also young and might not know any better. We should address this with her when we get back."
Sunlight spilled down in force from the upper canopy, leaving the surrounding trees dark enough to hide an army, and we would be helpless trying to see something or someone. A line of fluttery wings flickered between white and blue and flew off to our right. To our left, several trees looked like they'd been burnt some time ago and were covered in dry, brown-yellow moss.
I could see nothing at all in the shadows.
"Quickly!" I whispered back, and we filed after the dog to the other side.
We came back into the dark forest, followed a trail of disturbed leaves up an embankment, and climbed along a narrow path before the route she'd prepared leveled off. All around us, giant leaves blocked visibility beyond where we could reach, and we had to wrestle through.
Her trail entered more dense underbrush, with numerous twigs snapped all the way through. I made a mental note to talk with her when we got back—Haron, Josha, Montus, Vayance, and myself, all grew up tracking in the forest. We didn't need such an obvious trail.
We came to a patch of tree islands in a sea of grass just like the ones we hid in the day I killed the Good-Looking One. Overhead, tall trees of the upper canopy blotted out the sun, and the air felt oppressively thick. Dayumi's trail cut straight through it.
"This too easy." Tenae stopped. Beside him, Tamu sniffed the air.
I shrugged. "Come on. We'll talk to her about the trail when we get back."
"But—"
"Ah, ah!" Haron shook his finger and grinned. "No arguing!"
Tenae pursed his lips and breathed out slowly through his nose.
Some angles gave a view as far as forty yards while others less than two. Overhead, chirps, whistles, and the steady grinding of insects filled the air.
Tamu whimpered lightly, and a hand grabbed my shoulder. Tenae's pitch-black eyes locked onto mine. "This isn't Dayumi's trail!"
We all ducked low and peered into the dark trees all around. No shadow, no form, a line of stick that was too straight, nothing presented itself. There was no siren bird overhead. None of us saw any sign of eyes peeking out through the trees, nor any hint of a whisper. Shadows covered everything, and we wal— something whistled overhead. Wood cut the air as arrows zipped through the trees upon us.
One of them smacked into my neck, and another my back. Two more impacted my chest.
Ajak had a red mark on the side of his waist. Aydel rubbed his hip with agony on his face. Daemon was hit twice in his bony arse, Haron had one in the center of his chest and another on his shoulder where his bear-claw scar began, and Josha knelt and squeezed his eyes closed, rubbing the side of his head. Kaye arched his back and winced from getting hit in the back, Montus glared at me with a red spot on the side of his neck, Renou was shot in his navel, Rolon had two on the side of his ribcage, Turic had one on his chest and another on his shoulder blade, and Vayance had one on his knee with another in on the side of his stomach.
Tamu barked violently until a practice arrow smacked into his side, and he yelped.
"Let's move!" Bilal's voice called out from the trees, and all around us men melted into the forest.
"I TOLD YOU!" Tenae rubbed the red spot on his cheek and pointed a finger from his other hand at me.
"Did they even miss one of us?" Rolon looked around.
No. They did not.
"No arguing! Stupid shit-eating piece of SHIT!" Tenae lurched at me.
Turic stepped in to hold him back, but he kept shouting.
"Now, now," Haron wagged his finger. "There'll be none of that here! We have to get back through the gate first. Then we can punch him in the face! Don't you remember the agreement?"
Tenae looked at him wide-eyed and spat, "me first!"
"Dibs on second," Haron grinned.
"Third!" Vayance echoed.
"Let's not break his nose," Rolon inserted, "Miyani won't like that."