The main assembly chamber of Piper’s Hill was brimming with the wounded and the battle-ready. Tigrans, Yokun, and humans jostled about this way and that, attending to each other with the meager supplies they still had. Others were busy ensuring the last of the evacuations took place – they had led the families through the Southern Tunnels and were ready to join them after they’d licked their wounds.
But all of them stopped when they saw the figure of their new General enter their midst, attended by the Pale Matriarch and her faithful commanders.
“Take it all in, boy!” Marvin shouted over the din of the cheering warriors – those once-enslaved who had managed to repel their Masters’ servants so completely. A mere force of 300 had stood against a tide of at least 1,000 ferocious lizards.
“Ye hear that?” Marvin said with a jab at Marcus’s side. “That’s the battle-cry of freedom, so it is!”
Marvin added his own voice to that of the crowd as Marcus looked on, raising a hand sheepishly to wave away their chorus of praises.
“It’s a sound far more pleasing to my ears than the dins of the Underkingdom.”
“Yeah,” Karliah said – the Tigran slipping from behind him and nodding to her blood-covered sisters in the mass of bonded-turned-warriors. “I’ll bet. We heard the stories of you leading those vermin to victory. If you weren’t helping us out with your little war by distracting the Yokun’s favorite little pet down there, I’d have gutted you by now.”
“Then let’s be thankful he’s here to help us,” Mari cautioned, eyes darting to her haughty assassin. “Exactly when he was supposed to come.”
Marcus drew his eyes away from the crowd to meet Mari’s, sudden realization overtaking him as he heard the din of more explosions rocket above. The whole army crouched down, expecting the shaking ceiling of their underground lair to give way at that very moment – so close had the volley of projectiles launched from above come to their base.
“Vindictive bastard,” Mari huffed. “Even knowing that his men must be dead by now, the proud Prince still isn’t giving up.”
“Must go to protect the young,” Hialjia the Tauron groaned as she pushed past her fellows toward the Southern tunnel – the legion of Pipers turning to follow her.
“Wait!” Marcus shouted.
Three hundred eyes turned to meet his. And before he knew it, he was the center of their attention again.
Damn, he thought to himself. The more things change, the more they stay the same…
He then felt Mari grab his arm firmly from his side.
“I know what you’re thinking, Marc: there’s no way we’re gonna get everyone out with those Hakka-carts spewing their fire above our heads. The losses would be too great, no matter how fast we could run.”
She looked toward Marvin, who corroborated her belief with a bashful nod of his head. Marcus knew how good he was at avoiding those flames – but he wasn’t perfect. Not by a long shot.
“What else do we do then?” Hialjia asked, taking up the call from several of the Yokun archers who were agreeing with Mari’s sentiment. “Just sit and wait to die?”
“Yes, Princess,” Karliah scoffed. “What a novel idea that would be. Fuck all the effort we’ve put into fighting this impossible battle. Let’s just give in now that we’ve got a chance.”
The Tauron was about to reach for her axe, but Mari stopped her with a simple raising of her pale, leather-clad hand.
“Karliah?”
“I mean – we do have a chance here, don’t we?” the Tigran said as another booming din sounded above them all, sprinkling dust and ash upon their skulls. “Even if he is a filthy Under-dweller, the Elder Matriarch believed in him. She gave him the power to lead us for a reason.”
She eyed Marcus with an odd mixture of hatred and admiration, her sister Tigran nodding along with her every word.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“We Tigrans put much stock in prophecy,” she said in the face of his surprise. “We may be far from the dry dust of Dunehaven, but there are some things that cannot be taken from beneath the fur of the kitten.”
“Hah!” Marvin shouted. “You – you just admitted it! After all this time, you really are a ki–”
“One more word,” Karliah said as she leveled a blade in Marvin’s face without even looking in his direction.
Amidst the oohs of the crowd, Marcus simply smiled and gave a reverent bow.
“I’ve had warriors with far less noble intentions place their trust in me,” he said. “I followed through with their schemes to find the woman who leads you all. And now that I’m here, I have no intention of letting you – or her – down. Let’s take the fight to this Prince himself.”
“I knew you’d come around,” Mari smirked up at him. “My girlish charms clearly still have their uses…”
She turned to the warriors waiting before her – those men and women who had fought to breathe free air since they had been taken from their families and told they had nothing but a life of servitude to enjoy. They looked at the woman who had broken this belief with just as much fervor as she had smashed their chains, and they looked too at the man who would finish their fight.
“Pipers!” Mari shouted. “Are you ready to take the fight to our tormentor – the Prince of Hitogi himself?”
The resounding cry was one of unanimous assent, and Marcus had to smile to see it. Once again, he was reminded just how much trust and respect these people reserved for the woman he loved.
“This Prince – what do you know about him?” Marcus asked.
“Heh, we know him better than his own ‘loyal’ subjects do,” Marvin explained as Mari directed the army out of the Southern tunnels. “Nagoya Hitogi, the ‘favored son of Akira’ – Yokun God of Cleansing, Holy Flame. Supposedly it was under his oversight that the first Hakka charges were developed way back when the Yokun were just a bunch of tribals whipping their arseholes with swampweed.”
“The Prince is a lizard of honor,” Karliah scoffed. “He prefers to end wars swiftly and decisively, calling his brutal tactics a mercy in the long run. He and his Clan are known for their particular predilection for putting down internal revolts and silencing dissent in the court of the Triumvirate. As you can imagine, we’ve been something of a thorn in Nagoya’s side for a long time now.”
Marcus pondered their assessment while another payload of Hakka pounded the ceiling above, drawing disconcerted looks from the slowly moving forces below.
“With that kind of artillery, a frontal assault would be pointless,” Marcus surmised. “And I’m willing to bet that, considering the favorable angle of elevation, he’s probably holed up in a fortified position that gives him overwatch over this section of the jungle itself.”
“Quite right, son,” Marvin said as Mari rejoined the group, letting Hialjia take over and lead the army out. “I’ve seen his camp with my own eyes. The biggest advantage we have is that our Southern Tunnels actually fork at a certain point – maybe three hundred meters in – and take us right underneath the camp itself.”
“That is… a remarkable advantage, all things considered,” Marcus admitted. “How developed is this tunnel system?”
Mari nodded. “It’s these tunnels that have kept us moving – and kept us alive. They extend from the city of Tokeri to the North all the way to this little outpost. This place has been the sanctuary of the Pipers since before I even knew about them. Jin’an… she had kept this place a strict secret for so long. The dream of every bondsman slaving under the Arasaka sun was to travel these tunnels to freedom one day. Our own little underground railroad.”
Sorrow tinged Mari’s throat. She was still thinking about Jin’an, and although Marcus reached out to comfort her, she refused to look weak in the moment.
“The Southern tunnels are our newest creation,” she continued. “They take us out to the jungle, just a few miles from the human-controlled border. The plan was to make it to Marxon’s men and seek refuge.”
“Slavery’s long ago abolished in the Kingdom of men,” Marvin put in.
“Not for the purely altruistic reasons that you might think,” Mari reminded him. “Every freed slave is a new soldier for Marxon, after all. By this point, he’s amassed the greatest fighting force that this world has ever seen. We have to make it to him, Marcus. He’s the only one who can finally grant these people the life they deserve.”
“But first,” Marcus replied. “We’ll have to deal with this troublesome Prince.”
Another pang of power exploded above, and Marcus’s eyes turned to the pieces of Yokun weapons and armor that had been scavenged from the dead who had died in the tunnels. Useful, certainly, and intricate in their make – resembling the early-modern armor of Japanese samurai with such detail that Marcus could be forgiven for thinking that the Yokun had stolen the suits from Earth itself.
As the thought entered his head, he slowly began to formulate a plan.
“He’s a lizard of honor, you said, Karliah? Good. We can use that. There’s one thing lizards – and men – who care about looking good on the battlefield never expect.”
They colorful assemblage all stared at the smile that was breaking across Marcus’s face.
“Which is…what?” Karliah asked.
“Subterfuge,” Marcus answered through a devious smile. “We’re going to trick our Prince into welcoming his own demise.”
***
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