Chapter 1
“To me,” she called and Dingaan forced his way to her.
He swung his shield, displaced an enemy and continued his advance to her. The battlefield was chaotic. Both frontlines had collapsed, friend and foe intermingled and it was impossible to tell which side held the advantage. Dingaan stepped over slain enemies and fallen comrades alike, a supernatural urge to reach her side.
Dingaan wasn’t the only one who’d retreated from their respective confrontations. Most of the soldiers within ear shot desperately motioned to her. The more reckless fools abandoned their fights mid-exchange and we’re cut down or stabbed in the back.
Dingaan traversed the battlefield more cautiously but was just as anxious to reach her side, to fulfill her command. He slaughtered his may to her side, along with a good chunk of our troops.
She took a breather as a shield wall took shape around her.
She was clad in leather armour, an ox-hide shield and short spear in either arm respectively. She had tan skin and long thinly braided hair wrapped in a ponytail. A ferocious scar ran from the edge of the right-side of her lips, along her jaw, to the back of her neck. Her ominous look was further compounded by the black paint shadowing the rim of her eyes.
The Lady Dova Keen, Chief Regent to the Tigwana Tribe – residents of Natalia and ancestral protectors of the southern borderlands of the Zul Kingdom.
Or as the men called her – behind her back of course – Lady Grimjaw.
It took me a moment to notice the gash on her thigh, streaking red down her leg.
“Your hurt,” Dingaan blurted out.
He was kneeling before her before he knew what he was doing. He flapped out leather straps he'd tucked between his belt and began bandaging her thigh.
She looked down at him and he half expected reprimand for being so presumptuous. Instead she gave him one of her rare half-smiles. The right side of her lips, on her scarred side barely lifted up anymore.
“Good man,” Dova said and ruffled his short curly hair.
Dingaan blushed and avoided her gaze. Then felt embarrassed he'd looked away. Then stared back at her to try and save face.
She nodded him to an opening in the shield wall formed around her. Like that the moment had passed and she’d retreated into her shell. She barely ever spoke unless issuing commands.
The was power in her words that much was clear so she didn’t speak recklessly. Some called her a witch, a seductress who manipulated the late chief into marriage despite her unseemly scars, murdered him in his sleep and now stood atop the tribe as regent for her son.
Worse some called her a San Cleric – one of the super powered leaders of the enemy they currently fought.
‘That would make her a traitor,' he thought.
Dingaan shook his head and leapt to close the opening.
They were wrong. True her abilities to inspire people were supernatural and fueled by Might, the same spiritual energy the San Clerics and BlackVeins used for their powers.
However she wasn’t one of them, her powers were employed much too differently from theirs. Hence Lady Dova Keen was no traitor. No deviant schemer would risk their lives in battle. Not to mention the countless duels she contested to earn her rank in the army before she even married the late Chief Senzo and ultimately became regent when he died.
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The shield wall became a beacon and attracted the wrath of the San warriors. A large San warrior shoulder charged into his shield and he barely held his ground. The San warrior was in full plate steel armour, an A sign stamped onto his chest plate in glittering gold.
The sign of their one god or true god as they believed. The AllMighty, the apparent source of their clerics spiritual powers.
‘Nonsense,' Dingaan thought.
If that was true, how come the Lady Dova could also use the Might? How come the damnable BlackVeins could use the Might?
Dingaan jabbed his spear over his shield and embedded it into the armour’s eye slit. The San shrieked an un-warrior-like scream and blood oozed from his helmet.
Another San jabbed a sword from the side.
Dingaan pivoted, swung his spear and deflected the sword, threw open the San's guard. Dingaan lunged into a thrust, pierced his thigh. The warrior buckled and crashed to the ground. Dingaan finished him with a stab through the eye slit and stepped back into formation, ready to receive more charging San.
The shield wall waned and the fellow beside Dingaan succumb to his wounds and slumped to the ground, leaving an opening. The San warriors motioned to flow through it but another soldier was quick to plug the gap and the line held. Dingaan’s eyes bulged when he saw who it was – the Lady Dova Keen.
“My lady it’s not safe—” Dingaan trailed off as the air shimmered around her. She was gathering Might. A weight slammed into Dingaan, the pressure of the Might around her too much for normal men to bare. He had the instinctual urge to move away from her but did well to ignore it and hold the shield wall.
She sucked in a deep breath and shouted.
The gathered San warriors where blown back by some unseen storm.
Storm Howl, Rasor called it. The Lady Dova Keen wasn’t especially interested in discussing the strangeness of her abilities but the mad shaman Rasor Punq had taken it upon herself to name and catalog the regent’s abilities which seemed centred round her Voice, unlike the San Clerics whose abilities where centred round their mind or the BlackVeins whose abilities centered round their touch.
Lady Dova shield charged through the opening and knocked down a stumbling San.
Another San flanked her but her assegai flashed out and slit his throat, right through the steel helm and chainmail. She leapt forward and skewed a chubby San warrior.
Dingaan gaped as he watched her raise her spear, along with the skewed San, in full plate, flailing about as he was lifted off his feet, blood dripped down the shaft of her assegai. She didn’t hold him up long before slamming him down with a resounding thump. She yanked her short spear free and bellowed a war-cry.
Dingaan shivered at the sound of her Voice and something changed in him. He lost all reservations, lost all concern beyond fighting for the Lady Dova Keen and the Tigwana Tribe. His mind was clearer and he could follow the San's movements much better. His actions were just as crisp, as if his body operated more autonomously somehow or perhaps through muscle memory. He felt as if he was at the peak of his ability, a combatant’s ideal state and the feeling was intoxicating. He wasn’t the only one affected, the shield wall stood much firmer in repelling the San invaders.
Lion’s Roar the mad shaman called it. A peculiar sonic that placed all her nearest allies in a semi-trance like state of extreme focus.
“Forward!” She bellowed, short spear pointed.
Dingaan traced the path she’d outlined. 50 feet west, on a small incline overlooking the battlefield. He saw a figure in an brown patterned poncho, brown pants and straw-hat that shaded his face, irrespective of were the light shone on him.
‘San Cleric,' he thought.
Dingaan squinted. The cleric was surrounded by a guard of two dozen armoured warriors who hadn’t joined the chaotic battlefield.
The shield wall advanced according to her commands. Ripping through the battlefield field and providing refuge to any of our scattered forces. Well, the mobile ones at least, the too injured we left.
‘These are the hard truths of battle: comrade the one moment, dead weight the next.’
No exceptions, well maybe except for the Lady Dova Keen. She was worth a thousand men and the Tigwana Tribe had only persevered because of her rise. Her unique talents could not be lost, his instructors had pressed that much into him, back at Initiation School.
More so because her son – the current chief, though at fourteen he was still too young to officially take the throne – was not displaying signs of her unique magic.
Rumour had it, the mad shaman Rasor Punq had encouraged the Lady Dova Keen to take another husband. In the hopes of cultivating offspring whom carried her innate ability.
And apparently Lady Dova had neither agreed to nor dismissed the idea.
Her decision was of great interest to Dingaan. True, he was relatively young compared to Lady Dova’s mature forty – though she didn’t look a day over twenty, if you ignored her battle scars. Moreover Dingaan had no accomplishments to his name, if the Lady Dova did remarry she’d obviously never look his way.
Dingaan’s eyes flickered resolve and he fell deeper into the trance and the rate at which San warriors fell around him increased.