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Another long, twelve-hour night passed before the sun was again visible further up the world plain. The average summer day left eighteen hours from first daylight to when the temperatures grew too hot. Then another ten hours for the temperatures to cool before sunset. And repeat. That usually allowed for a thirty-hour day with two six-hour sleep cycles at late-night and again just after midday.
The day shift was typically spent hunting, foraging, teaching, and training. Night shift was more for hobbies and pursuits of personal fulfillment. As the son of the Quarterchief and nearly of-age himself, Maat arose just before dawn to prepare for the next day’s lesson: shallow-water hunting.
True to their name, the Stormheaths saw massive torrential downpours that supersaturated the porous, cavernous terrain. Lowland pools and entire floodplains could fill-in overnight. All manner of aquatic animals quickly filled in the pools and traveled with the drainage channels out to sea for spawning purposes. A productive Stormland rainy season offered preserved fish that could last the compound year-round.
“Okay, class,” Maat began. “How do we catch the mudfish?”
The group was made up of mostly the same young neophytes as the day before. The storm pools were one area where you seldom saw predators, who typically sniped fish further down the tidal basins. The youngest murmured out something noncommittal.
“First, ensure the water is still,” Sara said, coaxing the class to remember their lesson.
“Hold your breath, steady the spear,” said a few of the older kids.
“And…” Maat performed each step in tandem.
“You line the spear up with where the fish is going to be,” said the class.
“The spear is like an extension of your arm,” Sara added.
“Then you wait two heartbeats,” Maat said.
“And thrust the spear into the water!” The whole class threw their practice spears within a few seconds of each other.
Many nailed their targets with nonlethal suction-tipped spears. The fish were annoyed but would swim on to serve as practice for another day. Only a few missed, not a bad outcome for this stage of practice. True spear fishing, and the skinning/clubbing/cleaning/cooking that came after, could occur later – after the children had mastered night fishing, shadow-luring, and other skills.
It was going to be a long rainy season.
For Maat’s part, he nailed every fish he ever thought to put any effort into stabbing. Missing proved harder. In some ways it made him the natural choice for fishing teacher. In others, it proved harder for him to help those struggling with something he could only truly fail at with great effort. Just another reason why he had an affinity to the water, he supposed.
“Remember your dietary restrictions,” Sara added after a few more practice rounds. “Humans should probably stick to fish and specifically root-vegetables. Centurion birds work too, but only if it’s well cooked and you take care to excise the brain and nervous system.”
“But Miss Sara. Miss Sara!” said a young girl with long ears that ended in dull points. “What can half-clan eat?”
Sara knelt near the girl and winked. “We’ve got it better. Feel free to eat anything we haul back to the compound. Worst it’ll give us is a stomachache.”
Of the group of twenty, there were maybe three humans, including Ma’at, whose guts would hemorrhage if they ate most of Alabaster Isle’s staple crops. There weren’t a lot of them in the newer generation. Plenty of half-clan. From wherever Maat’s father hailed from, they weren’t sending any more hunting parties. Not a lot of same-clan from Maat’s generation or younger. His own descendants would likely be half-clan as a matter of necessity.
“Alright, class,” Maat said. “Practice has gone well. Now let’s have the oldest cohort try it with real spears.”
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Fishing practice was done for the day with hours to spare before the heat began to build. Ma’at felt it would be good to let the kids play in the pools for now. Meanwhile, he and the older chaperons could cook up some of the fish and they could all eat lunch on the way back home.
An hour later, the fish were gaining a brownish extra-crispy hue, rotating periodically on sticks over a modest cooking pit.
Just as the meal was almost ready, they couldn’t help but notice an eerie silence descend over the glen.
“Eyes up,” Lloyd said, nodding towards a line of whitewoods atop a cliff. Slender figures knelt amongst the pine needles on a high branch. With their armor made of bark, they were camouflaged almost perfectly with their surroundings.
“We didn’t wander too close to the river delta on the way here, did we?” Sara asked.
“Impossible. We took the most direct path.”
By now the stalking party was aware that it had been spotted. Pines rustled as they shimmied down the tree on hooks.
“Okay, kids. It’s time to go,” Ma’at said, without drawing attention to the reason why.
They would have to hope that the children didn’t notice they were leaving the fish behind half-cooked.
Lloyd took one of the larger fish off its skillet as he took up the rear of the retreat.
“No reason to waste it.”
The children marched, single file, down the well-trodden footpath back to Secondhome. They marched steadily, Sara at the front of the pack to guide them while Lloyd and Maat kept pushing them forward at a lightning clip.
Up ahead the path forked right. A narrower, near-overgrown path would loop back towards the river.
“Keep heading for the compound,” Maat told Lloyd.
“Huh?” Lloyd unsubtly looked backwards.
“I’m going to break away. Hopefully they’ll take the bait. It’s just me.”
“Well, that’s bold. Any last words for the Quarterchief?”
“What? No. Drop the kids off then grab my father and Hector and whoever else is available and come rescue me.”
Ma’at would rather not spend the next month or two in a Stormlander ransom pit. As the Quarterchief’s only living relative, he’d be quite the bargaining chip.
“We will honor your noble sacrifice,” Lloyd said then, “Keep them at bay for thirty minutes and I think we can bring help.”
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Maat took off running as soon as he veered off onto the alternate path. The pursuers would not be far behind, and there was little reason not to strike at the lone wanderer off by himself.
The side path was winding and seldom used. It cut between twin groves of carnivorous acid-drippers, which ought to slow the pursuit. In time, the path sloped downward along the banks of the river as it wound its way further north into the isle’s interior. This, too, helped, as Maat could only expect an attack from behind or to his right.
The stone ruins of the riverside shrine appeared amidst a break in the brush. With the closest moon approaching what counts as a waxing phase in these lands, the water had flooded the lowest level of the temple and was now lapping at the stairs.
Any stand would have to be made here. The only other path out of the temple ran too close to some flat, lightly wooded floodplains. It offered no cover, and a raiding party of any size would have overtaken it by now. Maat could only hope that his relief party could catch them by surprise. And to achieve that, he had to ensure all eyes were on the temple.
Despite being alone and outnumbered to an unknown degree, Maat didn’t panic. There was just something about the river waters that kept him focused. As if he was in his element.
The first sign of the raiding party came in the form of a few advanced scouts cropping up on the riverside path. They were the younger, greener members of the raid. The ones who hadn’t perfected the art of stealth, as it were.
As a defensive position, the temple was perfectly serviceable. Fill in some of the gaps in the outer wall, keep a constant watch up in the half-collapsed towers, and you’d be able to keep the average Stormlander war party out indefinitely. With a week or two to build up defenses and some supply rafts on the river and you could project force from these ruins all along this shore and into the river delta.
But Maat was just one man. Not even of age, technically! There was no time to up-armor all the weak points around the temple grounds; he had fifteen minutes, max. A series of advantages and disadvantages ran through his head.
Advantage: home turf. He knew the temple, where random Stormlanders from the far shore likely did not. There were divots, dead ends, places to hide in a pinch. He could hit and run if it came to that. The river was a plus, not just because it seemed calming and helped with his focus. There were only two major pathways anyone could come at him from, and only three major gaps you could use to reasonably squeeze through the exterior wall.
Disadvantages: numbers, clearly. The river that blessed him also cut off his escape. He could hardly swim out past the shallows and expect to remain uneaten by the local wildlife. While there were just a few points he could be attacked from, that also limited his escape routes. While reinforcements would come eventually, any extended fight was one he was going to lose.
As a final negative, Ma’at had no weapon more dangerous than a stick.
The best place to begin would be up in the towers. Ma’at climbed up to the tallest remaining spire. To his surprise, the first of the raiding party had already assembled along the wider, flatter path to the north and east. Ten figures in whitewood armor assembled at the tree line. Another fifteen began to emerge from the brush back at the riverside path. The river crew was likely the entire force of their new recruits. But the path back home likely had double or even triple the number of troops hidden further along the path as reserves.
At this point it would probably be best to hide in one of the lower levels, maybe find a half-flooded hallway and hide down there, pray the raiding party moves on before the tides rise and flood him out.
Maat peeked his head up out of the shattered tower to perform one last headcount. The troops near the river were blessing their spears with mud from the shoreline. This was a common Stormlander magic ritual, by which the spears could induce deadly illness from even a glancing blow.
A whoosh of air caused Maat to duck under the brickwork. A wooden spear, its tip caked in drier red dirt from higher ground, embedded itself deep into the temple wall. Maat ran downstairs even as he heard the sounds of an argument outside; someone had thrown their spear a bit too soon.
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Raiding parties always advanced in lockstep. By the time the soft centurion bird-skin boots could be heard stomping on the stone floor of the temple it’d be too late. Maat jumped down into the water and braved the flooded lower chambers rather than try to take on the entire advancing army.
Maat’s own birdskin boots kept the brackish flood waters on the temple floor at bay. He ducked into a crawlspace, then took a right and a left as the water lapped up at his shoulders.
For untold minutes he could track the stomps of the enemy raiding party above his very head. They searched the premises, shouting in muffled voices that were indistinct through the stonework.
Well, this could work out after all, Maat thought.
Alas, it was shortly after Maat had gotten complacent that a whitish, lung-suffocating smoke began to waft in through what open air remained in the half-flooded crawlspace. He was being smoked out!
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Maat continued through the crawlspace, careful not to make much noise to maintain his precarious position of stealth. They were burning buoyant thatch-wood on the water outside. The smoke wouldn’t cause any major damage, but it certainly made breathing too uncomfortable to stand for more than a minute or two.
Most breaches in the ceiling were blocked by smoldering thatch-wood. There’d be warriors guarding those openings. The water was up to his nose when an opening so narrow that the raiding party had passed it by appeared. Maat squeezed through and found himself in a barely human-sized courtyard with walls on three ends.
Footsteps could be heard on the far side of the wall to his immediate left. The only way out of here was through another crawling-room-only space at his feet.
Well, he’d made it this far. There was still no sign of any reinforcements coming to save him. The only options now were to lay low here and wait to inevitably be found out or take out some roaming guards and try to make an opening before he’s surrounded and captured.
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Greener troops had been tasked with stoking the fires. That made them inattentive – more concerned with the pits and the fires than wary about anyone else walking around at ground level.
The first sentry didn’t even turn his back as the outlander approached with catlike tread. Even Stormlanders on the shorter side towered a full head over Ma’at. Still, the extra height gave them a higher center of balance, made it easier to trip them up. Just had to jump up when aiming a blow at their heads. The first hapless greenhorn was knocked out in one blow. Ma’at stuffed him in a bush. Out of sight, for a time.
A second guard was patrolling around this pit. This required a bit of timing to get the drop on the Stormlander. Maat was able to sneak around behind the sentry, leap up to grapple at his neck, drag him down onto the stone floor, and choke him out. Two down. He stuffed this guard in a divot in the wall. It’d be a while before they’d find this one.
Ma’at moved counterclockwise around the circular temple, cutting across wider avenues and crawling amongst gravestones. Off-white puffs of smoke throughout the ruins allowed Maat to either avoid or confront the burner unit depending on how dense the guard patrols were.
One final bonfire was all that remained between Maat and the tree line. He could escape into the woods, run a direct, uncharted path straight to the compound. And there was no guard to be found at the bonfire.
Ma’at kept low as he passed by the smoke. This pyre was so large and the smoke so thick that it was impossible to see through. They must really be trying to force him out from the underground. No matter, he could use the column of smoke to make his escape.
A hand covered in fire-hardened bird-skin leather reached out of the smoke as Ma’at passed. It grabbed him by his collar and lifted the human clear off the floor. Kick though he might, Ma’at couldn’t break the grip.
The assailant shouted out something with a click and a whistle. Suddenly all of Maat’s stealth was for naught. He found himself dragged down one of the temple’s wider avenues by a figure three heads taller. Kicking the assailant proved futile, merely smashing Maat’s toes against the dense bone structure of a Stormlander.
“Unhand me!” Ma’at snarled, trying to look threatening.
His attacker shouted out a five-syllable word, then launched Maat through the air. He flew, limbs dangling every which way, through a gaping window in the main temple. He landed in the middle of the central chamber, fall broken only by neck-high flood waters.
Ma’at waded into the shallows. He was still up to his knees in river water continuously ebbing and flowing. All the while, the full might of the war party filed into the temple’s dry upper levels. Two-dozen spears aimed downward… and yet, no storm of thrown poison-tipped spikes ever came.
The party glanced about, nervous. A senior huntsman – signified by reddish stripes adoring his belt, ordered an advance.
Muttered clicking sounds came from the group. Ma’at made out the phrases for “water-born” and “holy waters” but otherwise the specific Stormlander dialect escaped him. He didn’t need a translation to know that confusion had gripped the ranks; they were unsure what, exactly, to do with the outlander.
The figure who’d thrown him back into the temple entered, wearing a belt with more crimson tassels than Maat had ever seen before. To the extent that warfare at this scale had ranks, he’d be well-above the usual captain of a raiding party this size.
Whatever the rank, this captain jumped into the water.
“Face me,” the captain said, brandishing twin engraved whitewood spears.
The Stormlander captain lunged, only missing because Maat dived laterally into deeper waters. It wasn’t a maneuver that would work twice.
Ma’at was as-yet unarmed. He wasn’t going to last very long without some way to defend himself. And he wasn’t about to roll over and die yet! Frantically, Ma’at searched under the water. There had to be a loose brick, driftwood, or something he could use! He gripped something long enough to swing just as his attacker was zeroing in for another thrust.
“A-ha!” Ma’at yelled, swinging a damp log by the one possible hand-hold – an extra-long knot near the skinnier end of the stump.
The swing did nothing against the captain’s whitewood armor. It did, however, force him to break off his attack to bring his spears up into a guarding position. And that bought some time to find something else to throw.
Next up, a loose bit of mud-caked brick. Would’ve been from a footpath outside somewhere. No matter, Ma’at threw it at the captain all the same, who dodged it with an effortless grace.
Ma’at brought up a third object from the deep. It was a skull, of similar shape and make to Maat’s same-kin. Huh, it was a graveyard after all. There was no time for sentimentality; Ma’at threw it at the captain all the same. The skull beaned the captain in the head.
The captain paused just long enough to throw his spears into the drink. He lunged forward, clearing the distance to Ma’at in three large strides, then threw a gloved fist directly into Maat’s face.
The blow sent Ma’at sprawling to the floor, head underwater. The next blow pierced through the water like an arrow and again hit Ma’at in the face. Then a third struck him in the chest, taking the breath out of him and filing his lungs with brackish sludge! Ma’at kept his hands up and knees tucked near his chest.
No fourth punch ever came. Blurry figures moved up on the ledges. Ma’at drifted back up to the surface and vacated his lungs.
The war party was scrambling as shouts came from outside the temple. There was a loud, low cry of a war horn that was clear even beneath the water. The captain clicked out some orders, having helped himself out of the water.
Ma’at had been forgotten just like that. Not that he minded. He waded over to a stairwell not currently occupied by the invaders.
Everything was soaked. He finished coughing up river water then stumbled out into the humid air of the temple courtyards.
Smoke bombs had been lobbed into the complex from the north and west. Reddish fog drowned out the white smoke of the meager thistle-wood bonfires.
The same elements that made the temple complex defensible to a fortified unit rendered it a tough nut to crack when the enemy was already past the gates and the defenders weren’t actively looking for attacks. Troops from Secondhome jumped in and out of the fog, launching stones with slings and retreating before the more melee oriented spear-wielders could organize an attack.
“Maat! You there?” a boisterous cry came from somewhere to his right. It was Lloyd. “You still alive, buddy? Quarterchief’s with me, by the main courtyard.”
That should be mere paces from Maat’s position. But amidst all the chaos and smoke he could hardly tell friend from foe apart.
Where is he? Ma’at scanned the riotous display. All these red tassels blended into the smoke. With vision mostly useless, Maat focused on his hearing.
“Coalesce in the central courtyard,” the order was barked, in a Stormlander dialect, from somewhere just ahead of Ma’at. No more than five human paces, and just a tad to the right.
A melee scuffle broke out from that very location. Good, the captain wouldn’t see it coming! Ma’at rushed forward and aimed a raised fist at the tallest figure he could find. The figure was laid flat, stumbling into a nearby wall.
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“Everyone stand down,” came a billowing voice not far from where Maat was now.
It was the Quarterchief! He swung a mighty war-mallet – sadly not the ancestral club, but a thicker, flatter whitewood variant inlaid with jagged rocks from the fumaroles.
“Dad?” Maat asked, peering through the fog.
The captain was already back up on his feet. All around them, various Secondhomers and the Stormlanders stared each other down. Some paused in mid-swing.
“Vile outlander. You who cannot even speak.” The captain clicked out something insulting sounding. “Go back where you came from.”
“Would if I could,” Quarterchief Michael said. “Look, we’ve been granted rights to this place from your father for years now.”
“Cretin! I bet you can’t even pronounce the name of my great-great grandfather. Ku’cli’koni’tong, patriarch of il-lionli’Laval. Go on, pronounce it, savage. Fail and prove yourself lower than a dog. Out with it, Outlandr-clan. Pronounce it!”
“Why?” Ma’at asked, brow furrowed.
Both the Quarterchief and enemy captain ignored him.
“Look, oh, what was the fifth son’s name. Lionel? Lionli’Laval? I’ve spoken to your father and your elder brother not a fortnight ago. Are you here on their orders?” Michael asked.
The captain, Lionli of the Laval clans, spat. “They call you Quarterchief because you are a quarter of the size of even our runts!”
That got a laugh from the war party. Even Quarterchief Michael chuckled briefly at the insult but stopped himself short.
Laval continued. “You subvert our traditions and squat in our ancestral temple. Our exiles and subaltern, they run off into the swamp to live under you rather than perform their caste-born duty and live in the untouchable’s pit.”
“The original builders of this place are so dead that no record exists even of their clan-name,” Michael said but was ignored.
“My grandmother, clan-matriarch. A strong woman who never cried a day in her life. She comes to her youngest grandson with tears in her eyes.” Laval kept a fist close to his chest. “She says: child, I have no one to work my fields because they’d rather go live free in the outsider’s hovel than indenture themselves to a clan-head!”
“Seriously?” Ma’at muttered to himself.
Still, this tearful anecdote got the Stormlanders riled up and itching to start the fight anew. They must of all had grandmothers who were suffering the indignity of their fields going without work by indentured lower castes. Secondhome’s makeshift militia, many of them exiles, hung their heads low, having been reminded of some apparent heresy.
“Lionli, if you’ve come here, under the nose of your honorable father, to beg us to hand over some escaped refugees for you to work to death in a field somewhere, I will beat you to death with my war club here and now,” the Quarterchief said with a teeth-gritted growl. “Your father has many sons. How many will miss having one less to split the clan lands with once he’s gone?”
Laval clicked out an order. Another warrior adorned with red tassels presented a slender metal object.
“These have been introduced to the north shore,” Laval handed the blade over to Michael. “It looked like your odd, Outlander technology.”
Michael studied the blade, as did Ma’at. It was curved, made of a shiny substance that caught the sunlight on a long, curved edge. The handle was made of wood with a leather grip, but not manufactured using any technique from this isle. More suited for cutting through the jungles of the Stormheaths than as a weapon of war.
“My father did not think you had the ability to manufacture blades of this caliber,” Laval said.
“We don’t,” Michael admitted.
“Could there be more of your kind, outsider?”
“Doubtful.”
“And you did not trade anything with the north shore trading posts?”
“Maybe three of us have been to the north shore. Two of those are now dead. We brought none of these blades with us to these lands and have not crafted any since arriving.”
Lionli’Laval waggled his brow, a skeptical response amongst the Laval clans.
“We will, of course, be patrolling the paths up towards the mountains. If any outlanders, untouchables, or foreign-islers in your charge are caught transporting your strange outlander goods, my father will know about it.”
“Very well,” Michael said, resting on his war club like it was a cane. “Go in peace, Mister Laval.”
Lionli’Laval responded with another hiss and a click that sounded threatening but convinced the war party to file out, bloodlust satiated. Some Stormlander goodbye, apparently.
“Keep the blade,” Lionli said on his way out. “There are many more.”
Once the Stormlanders departed, Quarterchief Michael took a quick stock of their casualties (just some minor scrapes) and any damage to the graves (a few headstones toppled, nothing that couldn’t be fixed). With that done, he addressed Ma’at directly.
Ma’at leaned back, uncertain. His father wasn’t the kind of person to strike his own son, but all the adrenaline of the midmorning battle left everyone looking haggard and wild-eyed. Instead, Ma’at let out a surprised yelp as his father picked him up in an embrace and twirled him around.
“You’re soaked,” Michael said, dropping Ma’at after a time. “We need to get you home; the noon humidity will kill you.”
Michael patted his son on the shoulder. “You did excellent! Kept the children safe and diverted an entire war party away from the compound. A feint! Couldn’t have done it better myself! Punching Lionli when I was about to parley with him nearly derailed our negotiation process, but let’s be real, he deserves worse.”
“Thanks, dad.” Maat chuckled, then showed off the bruise near his jawline. “It was payback.”
“I’m sure it was.” The Quarterchief ran his hands through his greying hair. “Ah, these stormlanders – Laval-clan in particular. Any of-age male with so much as a knife is assumed to be a warrior endowed with the full authority of the clan. They don’t necessarily understand that even though you’re my son, you can’t just represent Secondhome’s interests in a duel to the death. And of course, Lionli there’s a hot-shot with a quick fuse – son of a chief, he can just say the word and have plenty of other young’uns ready to club someone to death within the hour.”
“We have warriors too. Our fighters are considered to have the backing of Secondhome, er, aren’t they?” Maat motioned to the rapid-response war party, some of them still wearing plain bird-jerkin clothing.
“Our minutemen, yes. But our actual authority to make treaties and the like comes from polls and voting around the meeting table. Could’ve been different, but, eh, this way we’re less likely to stumble into a clan war because of one ambitious hothead.” Michael sighed. “Come, we can discuss today in more depth once we’re cool.”
Ma’at was tasked with holding that gifted blade on the way home. It was light enough to hold in one hand. With few knicks to the blade it had to have been newly forged. Stormlanders used metallurgy only sparingly, and the plains lacked the raw materials to craft a sword so sleek. Most likely it was from overseas. There was one identifying mark near the hilt that seemed off, however: a single word, written in familiar text that Ma’at nonetheless could not parse.
“At… kins?”
Maat struggled just pronouncing the strange consonants, so unlike the Stormlander pidgin. And yet, the word was oddly familiar to him.
“What was that?” Michael’s head shot up with startling urgency.
“It’s this word. It looks like the texts in the ancestral tomes,” Maat said, and pointed out the inscription.
“Give me that.” The Quarterchief snatched the blade out of his son’s hand with no regard to where the sharp end even swung.
It was an urgency that Maat’s father had not even shown in the battle just prior. Maat slunk away on instinct, cowed.
“Hector will want to see this,” Michael said after a time. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing you’ve done. It’s just, this blade…”
His father’s voice trailed off, and he continued on in silence.
The minutemen of Secondhome marched back home on foot. While the two war parties were evenly matched within the temple grounds, Secondhome fielded three times the number of Laval’s raiders in the forest immediately outside. A rearguard stayed behind to exchange the Stormlander prisoners – the vanguard and scouts in the jungle who had been utterly swamped by the vastly superior, lightning-fast force. Among the impromptu militia were refugee Stormlanders, the odd interior plains-dwellers, and even a few of Ma’at and Michael’s half-clan and same-clan standing short amongst their towering peers.
And to think that this was just the force that Secondhome could muster at a minute’s notice.
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