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Kotallo the orphan

In the morning, Kotallo was introduced to the other orphans. Jayko had made himself immediately available, the moment Kotallo had woken up, to show him around and Maina encouraged the partnership.

“You have permission to take the morning off your duties…but in the afternoon, you’re back on duty again. Kotallo will join you. I expect you to explain how the Bulwark works.”

Jayko grabbed Kotallo’s hand and dragged him out of the lodge.

“She’s cold as ice but she’s not a bad chaplain.” Jayko chuckled. “Come on…let’s not waste a morning off duties!”

Kotallo listened to Jayko who kept up a constant stream of information about the Bulwark, about the different places, the different skills, the jobs that people did and even about the orphan lodge.

“It’s a crowded year. Sometimes there are only a couple of orphans and other times…”

“Where do they all come from?” Kotallo asked quietly.

“They’re from here or Stone Crest…children whose parents are in squads that are both killed in combat.”

“This happened to you?”

Jayko nodded. “My mother died in birth to my little sister who didn’t long outlive her. My father was in a squad that was tasked with ambushing a Lowland Clan supply line…he didn’t survive his wounds.”

“Sorry…”

Jayko shrugged. “I was very young when it happened. I’ve been at the lodge since I was three. I don’t remember the sadness.” Kotallo wished he didn’t. “Maina will probably move Ellako to the girl lodge now that you’re here. She’s a bit young but…” Jayko shrugged.

“Girl lodge?”

“Any boy or girl, once they’re older than twelve, get moved to boy or girl lodges. Keeps the fraternisation down.” Jayko pulled a face, saying a word he’d heard without understanding the meaning. “Then they begin training in the pit against the masters.”

“Is Tekotteh a master?”

Jayko snorted. “He’s only twenty three! How could he be a master?”

Kotallo was surprised. Tekotteh’s manner and indeed his general presence impressed Kotallo with a sense that he was much older.

“He seemed so…sure of himself.”

“That’s Tekotteh.” Jayko nodded. “He’s a great fighter. All the girls from the lodge watch him train in the pit.”

Kotallo wasn’t surprised.

“We’d better get to our duties. We’re on inking today.”

Jayko took Kotallo to the inker who instructed them on the way to separate the pigments to help make the dyes that would be used to mark the skin of the clan members.

“Our skin tells the story of great deeds, of wonderous battles and grand challenges.” The inker announced, dipping his brushes into the ink. “Come Kotallo. You will receive your first mark today.”

Kotallo stood rigid like stone as the inker pressed ink against his forehead. His fingers went up to touch it.

“Stay your hand lest your smudge my work.”

Kotallo slammed his hands down and nodded.

“What mark did I get?” He asked Jayko.

“This one.” Jayko pointed to the sharp V over his right eye.

“What’s it for?”

“It lets everyone know you’re an orphan.”

Kotallo’s heart sank.

Did everyone truly have to know?

His skin itched from the ink. He wanted to scratch at it. He was so intent on not scratching it he bumped into Tekotteh coming up the path.

“Kotallo! How are you? I see you received your first mark.”

Kotallo’s eyes brimmed with easy tears. He turned away, ashamed of his grief.

Tekotteh put his hands on Kotallo’s shoulders. “Look at me, Kotallo…when you grow up, you will accomplish great things…and the stories of those deeds will be inked all over your skin and that mark will disappear because it will no longer be who you are. Wear it now…and whenever you think of it…make it the stepping stone to the next challenge to be conquered until no one remembers it.”

Tekotteh’s words rested deeply within Kotallo’s heart.

He attempted to do all that he said.

Jayko helped Kotallo learn all that he had to do as an orphan. They were the extra pair of hands, helping prepare food, strip machines, mix dyes, make weapons and even clothing. Maina explained that the range of experience would help Kotallo in deciding what it was he wanted to do with his life if becoming a warrior was not for him.

Kotallo paid attention to everything he was learning, listening when the clothes stitcher told him about the weaknesses in weaves and the chinks in armour. He studied weapons, their sharpness and usefulness. He worked on machine stripping until he could remove delicate components without damaging them. Cooking was often the most difficult for him as it brought to memory his mother making food for their small family. He often wished he could taste the vegetables she used in her stews. The sweetness of carrots, the texture of potatoes…the flavours that herbs gave…

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

And while he dreamed of becoming a warrior like Tekotteh, when squads returned, red with blood, their own and others, smelling like iron, sweat and death, Kotallo recalled the bodies of his parents, dragged to the funeral pyre.

It was though the grief was a part of his shadow and like his shadow, he wasn’t sure if he would ever be free of it.

There seemed to be an urgency in the air, a sense of desperation. Kotallo heard whispered conversations and vows made in the darkness. The violence between the three clans was coming to a head. A chief of unparalleled skill and violence from the Lowland Clan was making for Memorial Grove, a place that the Sky Clan controlled and had done so for the better part of Kotallo’s lifespan. To control the Grove was to wave a victory banner over the tribes. Even Kotallo recognised that all the boasts about clans being the greatest meant nothing if they did not control the Grove.

Lankatta, the Sky Clan commander, spent most of her time travelling between the Grove and the Bulwark but upon the threat of the Lowland Clan, she sent runners to all settlements within her control, calling out for warriors to aid in her defence. There was a flurry of youths taking to the Soldier’s March, a dangerous climb up an icy mountain to retrieve a blood red bloom, proof of their initiation so that they could join a squad.

Only a day later the newly formed squads and the ones with more experience, answered their commander’s call. Kotallo watched as squad after squad descended in the lift, marching towards the Grove. The Bitter Breath was one of the first and Tekotteh passed by Kotallo. He clapped his hand on the boy’s shoulder and winked. Kotallo swallowed down his nerves and nodded then watched him go.

The next day the masters of the pit announced that the orphans were to begin their training. Lankatta was proud of her clan but even she recognised that they would suffer heavy losses and wanted the next generation of youth to begin to be trained.

Kotallo found himself in the pit, clutching at a padded sword, facing against Amenka who was two years older than Kotallo but looked about five years his senior. He wore his hair in a tight bun, already adorned with a little machine armour while Kotallo was in orphan hand me down clothing, scraped, stitched and pinned together.

Amenka was a warrior’s son who was covered in glory and ink detailing his conquests. Amenka boasted to have already taken down small machines.

Kotallo still had nightmares about being trapped in a small space that was filling up with blood.

The outcome was inevitable and hardly unexpected. Amenka was victorious no matter how Kotallo struck out at him and the orphan boy always ended up on his backside on the hard stone. One time Amenka even managed to draw blood, splitting Kotallo’s lip.

“Come on little orphan squad soldier,” Amenka mocked, “attack me.”

It became a rare day that Kotallo did not end up at the doorway to the healer’s alcove. He found a place to hide and rub the salve on his wounds. As he did so, he heard the Pit Master, Atikka, speaking with Gerrah, a woman who had been unable to join Lankatta at the Grove because she was swollen with child.

“…with someone else?”

“If the boy cannot stand up to Amenka, what hope is there?”

“You are crushing his spirit with your relentless resolve.”

“You seek to tell me how to run my own training pit?”

There was a pause. “I only wish to encourage you to try a different method. Kotallo grew up out outside the Bulwark and his parents were pacifists. He has never held a weapon before…”

“I am to bear their folly and their useless child? You have seen him cowering in the pit. If the boy has no stomach for battle, make him a stitcher or a cook. I won’t waste time on him while Amenka is as good as they come. We need warriors, not babies, to defend the Sky Clan.”

Kotallo waited for them to pass by before escaping the Bulwark, heading even further into the mountains, so far that he lost sight of everything except the blinding white of snow. He could see so little that it was only the heavy, ground splitting thud nearby that caused him to pause and look up.

To his horror, a Tremortusk was within a stone’s throw from his position. It was one of the largest machines the Tenakth had encountered, an armoured colossus, twenty feet tall with giant tusks and feet to match. He was so close it was astonishing that it hadn’t seen him but the storm was violent and a heavy veil of snow was between it and himself. Kotallo watched the Tremortusk stomp away, even the largest trees not giving its pace reason to pause.

Kotallo watched it go.

Then he heard his name called.

He turned to see Jayko and Gerrah hurrying towards him.

Suddenly he realised just how cold he was…

…and because of his foolishness, he developed a fever and slipped into a delirious sleep.

He was standing in the snow, grasping a spear that was twice as tall as him. Three Tremortusks approached, appearing through the white haze against a black sky. He fumbled his spear, holding it out as best he could in front of himself. The lead Tremortusk reached out with its trunk and yanked it from Kotallo’s hand, tossing it into the snow at his feet.

A challenge.

Kotallo knelt in the snow but the spear had sunk from sight.

“I can’t find it.” He whimpered. “I can’t fight it.”

A pair of big, strong hands dove into the snow and lifted the spear out of obscurity.

Kotallo looked up to see his father smiling at him.

Rather than feel encouraged, Kotallo was angry.

“You…you never taught me to fight like a true Tenakth! I’m weak! I’m a failure!”

“Kotallo…do you remember the time we tracked the Fanghorn that was terrorising the Grazers who worked so peacefully in our valley?” Kotallo’s jaw was tight. He didn’t respond. His father, softly glowing, didn’t seem to mind. “Do you remember how we set traps and when it was stunned, we tied it down?” Kotallo couldn’t understand what his father was speaking of. “You watched me dispatch that Fanghorn with a violent blow…and for a moment, you were afraid of me.”

Kotallo recalled the moment, seeing his father stand over the twitching body of the machine and felt the same tremble of fear.

“That night you told your mother that you were scared and she knew it was not of the machines…but of me. So your mother took you out of the cabin and showed you the valley…and the Grazers that had returned because the Fanghorn was gone, peacefully tilling the ground once more. My son,” his father took his face in his hands, “if you must be violent, be so in defence of something more than yourself…if you cannot be brave for yourself, be brave for others.”

Kotallo felt his father’s fingers slip away. He lifted his head to see that he was no longer there. Kotallo looked down and saw the spear in his hands. He raised his head and gazed at the Tremortusks that towered over him. He stood to his feet and struck the spear into the ground, his form growing until he was the size of a man…

…and the Tremortusks knelt before him.

When Kotallo woke, he could still feel the metal and woven features of the spear in his hands. He turned his head, spying Gerrah sitting on a chair nearby. He croaked something unintelligible. She looked up from her stitching.

“Kotallo,” she whispered and leaned over, putting her fingers across his forehead, “I thought you were lost to us…but the fever has broken.” She smiled at him. “You are made of sterner stuff than you look. I’ll get you some broth.”

Kotallo watched her wearily then felt a weight on his legs. He looked down and saw Jayko asleep at the end of the bed.

“He has spent every spare second he could here.” Gerrah explained. “If not for him, I would not have thought to search for you. He saved your life.”

Kotallo nodded and sipped the broth, barely eating half of what she gave him. When it was done he looked at her quietly.

“You know how to fight?” He asked.

Gerrah glanced at him. “Well, yes I do.”

“Can you teach me?” Kotallo’s eyes dropped to her belly before he looked away.

“I am with child, not infirm.” Gerrah laughed softly. “I can teach you.”

“Will you?”

Gerrah paused. “Kotallo…there is no shame in not being a warrior. If you want to be an herbalist or a stitcher…”

“I want to learn how to fight.” Kotallo rasped.

Gerrah leaned forward as much as her bulging belly would allow. “Why, Kotallo? I need to know why…”

“Because my father could fight…”

Gerrah gazed at him. “How did your father fight, Kotallo?”

“Defending others.”

She smiled. “Yes. That I can teach you.”