“Open the gate, Ochieng. I don’t have time.”
“Don’t have time, neh? Where’s your hurry?”
“Hedeni raid,” Tau said, hoping the news would shock the guard to action.
“Just heard. What’s it got to do with you?”
“I have to see Jabari.”
“He know you’re here?”
“What do you think?” Tau said.
“Don’t know what you’re fooling about,” Ochieng muttered, disappearing behind the wall. A moment later, Tau heard the heavy latch on the bronze gate swing up and away.
“Hurry. In you get.”
“Thanks, Ochieng.”
“Didn’t open the gate for you. Tell Aren I said hello.”
Leaving the gate behind, Tau came to a juncture in the keep’s paths and stopped. Jabari could be almost anywhere, and, worried he was making the wrong choice, he went toward the keep proper and Jabari’s rooms.
He moved through the keep’s yards at a brisk walk, head down, trying not to draw the attention of any of its handmaidens or administrators. Lessers in the keep tended to be women or, if male, they were higher caste than Tau. He’d stand out and didn’t want to be stopped or, worse, prevented from getting to Jabari.
He sped up, eyes on the dirt, anxious to get where he was going, which was why he came near to knocking his younger half sister on her ass.
“What in the Goddess’s… Tau?” said Jelani, unable to keep the surprise from her face. “Why are you here?”
“Hello, Jelani.”
“Don’t ‘hello’ me.”
“Uh… how’s Mother?”
“That’ll depend,” Jelani said, glaring at Tau like she’d found a maggot in her rations, “on what I tell her about seeing you here.”
“I’m looking for… Jabari asked to see me.”
Jelani squinted at him. “Jabari?”
“Yes, there’s a raid in the mountains… the hedeni—”
“He’s in the bathhouse. Find him and leave, before I tell my mother.”
Our mother, Tau thought, inclining his head and hurrying back to the path he hadn’t selected. He swore he could feel Jelani’s beetle-black eyes on his back as he went. She hated having a half-low as a sibling. That’s how she thought of him, half-low.
It made Tau want to yell that he was as High Common as she was. Status came from the woman who bore you, and his name was Tafari, just like hers. It wouldn’t have done any good. Jelani knew their mother wouldn’t have anything to do with him, or Aren.
Pushing his sister out of mind, Tau stepped up to the bathhouse, opened its door, and was hit by a blast of hot scented air. “Jabari?” he said into the fog. He didn’t dare go in. “Jabari?”
“Tau? That you?” said a familiar voice. “What are you about?”
He’d have only one chance to convince Jabari to help. “There’s a fight coming,” Tau said, “and if we don’t do something, the people your family pledged to protect will die.”
Tau heard water slosh around, and then Jabari appeared through the steam, towering over him, stark naked.
“What’s this?”
Lekan hadn’t told Jabari about the raid. Tau corrected that, telling him everything, then begging him to act. “Go to your mother,” he said. “She’s the umbusi; tell her the defense of Daba will fail without more men.”
“Tau, I’m the second son. Lekan’s the one being groomed to command our fief’s men. She won’t go against him on my word.”
“Jabari—”
“She won’t, Tau.”
“We have to do something!” Tau said, struggling to keep his voice respectful.
“I know, I know. There’s a fight coming and my family must protect the people of Kerem.” Jabari clapped Tau’s chest with an open palm. “I have it.”
“Have what?”
“A plan,” Jabari said.
RAID
There,” Tau said, pointing at a flickering light in the distance. “Do you see it?” The light was bright against the evening’s darkness, but he was never sure how far Jabari could see.
“I see it,” Jabari said. “They’re burning Daba.”
He picked up the pace, and Tau, lungs raw from running, struggled to keep up with his friend’s longer strides.
He couldn’t believe he’d gone along with Jabari’s plan and tried not to think about what they’d find when they got to the hamlet. “What if this doesn’t work?” Tau asked. “What if they don’t come?”
“They’ll come.”
Before leaving the keep, Jabari had gone to its barracks and told everyone he was going to Daba to defend the hamlet. The highest-ranking guard in the room tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t be swayed.
It was clever. Jabari couldn’t countermand Lekan’s orders, but the guards were bound, on pain of death, to protect every member of the Onai family. By letting them know he was putting himself in harm’s way, Jabari was forcing them to organize and send an honor guard to protect him. Tau hoped the extra men would be enough.
“Swords out!” Jabari said as they came over a hill. Tau pulled his weapon free, looked down on the hamlet, and froze.
Daba sat on a plateau with natural borders. The most obvious border was four hundred strides directly ahead. There, the plateau became mountainous again and the rock continued its climb to the clouds. To Tau’s right, and roughly eight hundred strides away, was the hamlet’s central circle. Beyond it, the plateau ended in a series of steep but scalable cliffs that dropped toward the valley floor. On Tau’s left were the raiders.
The hedeni had come from the paths leading to Daba’s growing fields, and they had burned half the hamlet already. The flaxen roofs of the larger houses were on fire, and in the night’s dark, the flames silhouetted the fleeing women, men, and children of Daba.
The Ihagu, Aren’s men, were fighting a series of skirmishes between the hamlet’s tightly packed homes and storage barns. They were outnumbered and losing ground but could only go so far. The hedeni were herding everyone to the cliffs.
Tau didn’t know what he’d expected, but this wasn’t it. Scarred and disfigured, marked by the Goddess’s curse, the hedeni held either bone spears or bone-and-bronze hatchets and chopped at the Chosen like woodcutters. They used no recognizable fighting stances and their attacks followed no rhythm or sequence. Worst of all, the Ihagu had been reduced to fighting just as savagely. Both sides hacked at each other, and every so often someone fell back, dead, wounded, or maimed.
“What is this?” Tau asked, his voice too low for Jabari to hear.
“There,” Jabari shouted, running down, not waiting to see if Tau followed.
Tau tracked his path and saw three of the raiders harrying a woman and child. Jabari yelled, charged in, and Tau chased after him.
By the time he reached the flats, Jabari had already engaged two hedeni. They were circling to his sides, trying to get between him and the woman and child.
Tau went for the third savage, arcing his sword in a blow meant to decapitate, but the wretch brought up a hatchet and blocked the strike. The raider, a mass of dirty hair and mud-caked skin, blundered forward, swinging the weapon low, aiming for Tau’s thigh.