A Will Without Strife
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After Commander Tla, Executor Nom Anor and Tactician Raff had been dismissed, Malik Carr remained for a time studying the quiescient villips. Harrar steepled his fingers, content to wait, though curious as to why the Commander had spoken on his behalf. The three large flesh-communicators slumbered now, where they had just displayed the noble visages of Supreme Commander Nas Choka, Jakan of the Deception Sect and Prefect Drathul. Tla was in disgrace, having cosigned Priestess Elan's plan. Harrar had supported it as well, yet when the order from Nas Choka came to recall Tla and Harrar both to the Outer Rim, Malik Carr had stayed his superior's hand.
"They came close, did they not?" Malik Carr asked, rising from his throne, leaving the softy pulsing, leathery tongue to curl back up on itself. Harrar followed the tall Commander with only his eyes, as the warrior peered down at storm-wracked Obroa Skai below. Secure in Harrar's personal vessel, a geometric, faceted crystal of some size, the world was displayed as a tortured, wounded sacrifice in the void. Chips of stone like dust in the wind scattered all about them; the vanguard of Malik Carr's armada.
"It is as Nom Anor claims," Harrar agreed. "I see no evidence to dispute. Elan and Vergere were conveyed the Coruscant without issue. There they met with the jeedai on a so-called 'skyhook'. What came next, we cannot say for certain, only that the Priestess failed in her tasking." To himself, Harrar kept the rumors that Elan's mascot Vergere might have survived the debacle. Reports were conflicting, though sympathisers of the Peace Brigade claimed that there had been considerable chaos aboard the skyhook before many escape pods had been launched, allegedly by fault or mistake. Vergere might have been aboard one, though they scattered far and wide across the surface of the wretched city-world and from there were lost.
"Then the fault lies not with you, nor Nom Anor, though Yun'Yammka may claim my tongue to speak well of the meddling Executor." Malik Carr, as tall as any of the caste sacred to the Slayer, bore his marks of elevation and service proudly, upper torso bared to reveal brands, whorled scars and knotted tissue. A long, twitching cloak hung from claws anchored to his collarbone, its train caressing and stroking across the yorik-coral underfoot. His eyes were sharp and dark, pools of ink over elegantly blued and sagging sacs worked with tight red tattooing. His black hair was woven with living fabric, tasseled from a tight wrap about his elongated scalp and his tresses fell to the small of his muscled back.
"In all other ways, the design was flawless," Harrar mused. "Once again, the jeedai prove their ungracious good fortune."
"Not a single was slain?"
"It appears not. In time, our agents will glean more of the confrontation, but I am in agreement with the Executor's assessment. There are few enough jeedai, any death would be known."
"I admit," Malik Carr huffed a sigh, his broad chest compacting as he blew out a lungful of the sweetened, incensed air of the chamber. "I do not understand Nom Anor's obsession with the jeedai. It reeks of ego. It smacks of personal affrontery."
"Nom Anor has been chastened by the jeedai before, this is true. But I placed my own stamp upon this, Commander. I am gracious to your intercession, but I will not hide that I supported Elan's proposal."
"As I have no stomach to listen to Nom Anor, tell me again your reasons, Priest."
Harrar gathered his thoughts, remembering the H'kig priest, the other sacrifices who, in the face of immolation, were firm enough in their beliefs to muster a strength of fibre Harrar thought impossible in this decadent galaxy. Jeedai, jeedai, jeedai they claimed. It seemed everywhere one turned, there was spoken reverence of the jeedai. Leaving aside the shaming of Shedao Shai and humiliation of many warriors on worlds like Dantooine, that depth of belief would have been enough for Harrar.
"We wage a war of faith as much as a war of warriors," Harrar considered. "This galaxy is promised to us, by the sacred word of the Rainbow Eyed, but we do not need to put to the amphistaff every being within it. We have found fertile ground already for our teachings in some worlds. This is an atheistic and material galaxy. It is that weakness of the soul that allowed in abominations of metal and lifeless construct. The only great binding belief across the stars, as I see it, is faith in this 'Force' and the jeedai. If we break that, we shatter a keystone of their culture."
Malik Carr considered this, pursing his fringed lips and drawing close spike-pierced brows.
"I understand. In a sense, at least. I prefer the truth the Slayer offers, Priest. You may concern yourself with the soul of a people, but I must concern myself with the flesh-and-bone that wage war against us."
Harrar bowed his head.
"To each of us our duty, as the Gods intend."
Carr barked a harsh laugh.
"Spoke truly, Priest. I am enlightened." He touched fingers to his lips and brow in mock deference, then returned beside Harrar, stroking the trigger-pad of his throne. Sighing, the tongue-chair unfurled and adjusted as Carr demanded. The Commander perched instead on the edge, folding his hands together, elbows resting on his knees. Even seated so, leaning heavily, Malik Carr was of a height with Harrar who sat more erect.
"I would have you accompany me, Priest, as we do the work of the Supreme Commander. I think I will value your perspective. I am a pious man, but I am oft preoccupied with my purpose. I would have you as my advisor on matters of the spirit."
He would not judge the talons of a gifted quednak. Though it would not be impossible to call upon favors he had accrued to return to prominence and to the front where the most glory and influence was to be harvested, Harrar had not climbed to his place among his caste by being wasteful. If Malik Carr desired a spiritual advisor, he was all too happy to remain here, where he could serve the Gods best.
"I am honored, Commander. If not amused one such as yourself would entertain a disciple of Yun'Harla."
Malik Carr bared sharpened incisors in a warrior's snarl.
"Warfare is nothing without a little misdirection. We play games with our foes, we make feints and diversions and we call it otherwise, but a masque of falsehood always lurks close by."
"How dishonorable," Harrar observed.
"Terribly. Leave Domain Shai to scream their plans across the stars and beat their chest bloody before dying on the blades of their enemies. I would have victory for the gods, not idle aggrandizement."
Harrar dipped his head in agreement, his new charge already rising in his estimation. Tla had been staid and plodding, competent enough but without any true spark of inspiration or intelligence behind those dim eyes and pale sacs below them. Malik Carr was on a trajectory for greatness with the ear of Nas Choka. Though Harrar already had the honor of the Warmaster's eye, it was always pragmatic to cultivate his flock.
"You make the True Gods pleased," Harrar assured him. "With Commander Tla gone, what is the status of our -your- warriors?"
Malik Carr grimaced.
"It is as was said. The Elan plot wasted good lives and warships. Yorik-akaga and -kamoc only, with the feint at Ord Mantell, but we are not yet replete with reserves. Combined with the presumed loss of Subcommander Yimarg Shai's squadron after our conquest of Telerath, we must be discerning with targets. The Supreme Commander brings many new warships with him, but it will be some time before his arrival."
"Thus, the overtures to the Hutts."
"Odious creatures, I have heard, but mercenary in their dealings. Nom Anor assures - assures - that they will be amenable. If we might establish a shipwomb there, nearer to the front, much of my concerns will be alleviated."
"And Subcommander Yimarg's squadron is lost, for certain?"
Malik Carr nodded, his long, glossy braids sweeping over his shoulders.
"It has been weeks. The fool no doubt pursued his prey into some nest of the New Republic. A further loss of cruiser hulls," the Commander groused. "But enough of this. We will depart soon for Nal Hutta. I would have a tale from you. A sermon, Eminence, if you can manage. To forget the troubles spun by Intendants and jeedai."
"Very well," Harrar agreed, reclining into the soft, warm leather of his tongue-throne. Taking a sip of broth from a squirming bulb, he began.
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"In the days before Yuuzhan'tar, when the sky was flat and the rainbow of heaven kept promise above all the People, there were of course many warriors who plied their trade across all lands. They would swear to masters and overlords, promising service in return for glory and a little food, for their soul would feast on the former but their bodies required the latter.
These warriors would train body and mind and that was their sole devotion. The greatest of these warriors, the warlords, were polymath. They practised with the amphistaff, trained in the subtle art of the coufee, cast bug and jelly and were learned in the tactics of beast and biont. Great wars were sometimes fought and lost without ever the spilling of blood, for their advancement in the sacred art of war meant that warlords would pit against one another as puzzles to be undone.
One warrior grew tired of these lofty elevations and saw how effete and decadent the warlords were becoming. Now they were their own overlords and their own masters, instead of plying the honest trade of amphistaff, of blood and bone. He beheld the world grow grey and dull, full of games and boasting and less of the martial art.
This warrior was named Yu'ka, and he set out to train to become, merely, the best. He did not devote himself to the pursuit of tactics, he did not take up the bug or jelly, he cared not at all for ideas of logistics or theory. Yu'ka took up his amphistaff, and every day he made one hundred cuts. He never swung his amphistaff without drawing blood, for only in the drawing of blood, he knew, was a stroke shown true. Each day he made one hundred cuts and each cut he learned from, sparing and careful before each strike, so that it would not be wasted.
Other warriors saw Yu'ka in his training and they laughed and scorned him, telling him he practiced as a barbarian, that he was blinkered by times long past. Yu'ka did not answer them in words, but in selecting them for the next day's cuts.
In time Yu'ka grew strong and swift and his renown as a deadly bladesman spread. Yu'ka the Quiet, he was named, for he spoke as least as he could.
But he was one among billions and though his name held some currency, he was a speck before the greatest warlords.
Yu'ka trained. He cut a hundred times a day, until every stroke was perfect, and then he cut two hundred times. He fed only on the blood of what he slew, because it was his, and if he could not eat, it would be because he failed. Yu'ka grew stronger still, until his amphistaff was said to cleave the very air as it sang.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He was still not satisfied.
There was a Warlord, named Korshu Ann, who commanded a thousand million warriors, and Korshu Ann had been at war with his great rival, the Red Salt, for a hundred years. These two Warlords soaked the lands between their keeps with blood perennially, until trees grew of corpses and great fields of fingers sprouted and waved in the wind. They were perfectly matched, for every trick Korshu Ann knew, so too did the Red Salt, and every tactic was taught in practise so that the other learned it well. Korshu Ann and the Red Salt waged glorious war, until Yu'ka offered his arm to Korshu Ann.
The warrior came into the keep of Korshu Ann and stood before his tentacled throne, holding out his amphistaff in one hand. Retainers of the great Ann mocked and jeered at the lone warrior, who claimed that he could end the Red Salt, and finish this endless feud. Korshu Ann saw little to lose, and knew that in their great balance, the smallest shift might tip the scales, and wise Korshu Ann saw in Yu'ka a greater strength than his retainers. With the blessing of the great Ann, Yu'ka went out in the fingerfields and sat cross-legged to wait.
Of course, the Red Salt had all passages watched with a thousand spying eyes, and word of the lone warrior was passed on and up until the Red Salt himself learned, and sent ten warriors to punish Korshu Ann for this insult and trespass.
Yu'ka made ten cuts, and sent the warriors back in pieces.
The Red Salt sent a hundred warriors.
Yu'ka made one hundred cuts, and sent the warriors back in pieces.
Angered now, the Red Salt commanded his best cadre, They Who Drink Wells, to destroy this single warrior and swore that if any failed, the Red Salt would slay them himself.
A thousand of the Well-Drinkers came out into the fingerfields to surround Yu'ka, and they bade him throw down his amphistaff and die with honor.
Yu'ka had not yet trained to make a thousand cuts in a day, so instead, Yu'ka fought for three days, and made three hundred and thirty-three cuts between sunrise and sunset. At midnight of the third day, he struck the head from the Crouching Lord of the Well-Drinkers before the keep of the Red Salt.
Then he left, because he knew enough. Korshu Ann exploited the deaths of They Who Drink Wells to gain minor advantage for the next four years, until the Red Salt personally took the field to slaughter Korshu Ann's vaunted Cavaliers.
But Yu'ka had moved on, because he understood limits.
He could cut only so many times per day, and thus knew his mastery of the amphistaff was unfinished.
Instead, he pursued a greater mystery, and Yu'ka vanished from tellings for half an age.
By this time, Korshu Ann and the Red Salt had been overthrown by other warlords and their names were forgotten, replaced by new names and new keeps, who still watered the fingerfields and corpsetrees with the blood of warriors. So the time turns, so it stays the same. His legend remained, and an inheritor warlord, called Sarus the Tooth, wished to call on the ancient warrior in his own bid to cast down a rival.
Sarus the Tooth had less wisdom than long-dead Korshu Ann, and brought his army to seek out the warrior Yu'ka.
They found him meditating in a glade, amphistaff draped about his neck, naked to the waist. Sarus the Tooth demanded the services of the warrior, offering a pathetic bounty, and his army drew up around him. Sarus the Tooth was a fearful lord, devoured from within by suspicions and jealousy, and he feared to see Yu'ka in the flesh.
"Serve me," he declared, "or you have no use in the world."
Yu'ka stood and his amphistaff slithered into his grip. All the army of Sarus the Tooth bristled, ready for the command.
Yu'ka made a single cut.
The army of Sarus the Tooth died, leaving the warlord alone. He threw himself on his face and wept, unmanned, and Yu'ka did not notice.
Yu'ka left his glade behind, because he understood the truth at last, and in practise had named it, and went back out into the world to make war in the truest way, in the way that none could match.
He who cuts but once may slay but once, but he who cuts two ways slays twice. Yu'ka learned this and more, until he mastered his art, which he called the Ten Ten Thousand Cuts. He made it so that when he cut, there was no space where his blade did not cleave.
But the mortal warlords of the world could not compare to him, so Yu'ka looked elsewhere. He looked at the rainbow bridge above and with the cunning of his blade, he slit the air so that there and here were one and the same and he stepped through into the domain of the gods high above.
To each of the teeming, multitudinous gods he went and of each he asked a single boon. His ambitions were great, but Yu'ka learned humility through the art of his blade. To become slaughter, to become one with the idea of death, one must cut away all that was not of purpose, and to cut away all that was not, one needed to know all that one was.
As each god would answer, by stroke of his amphistaff, he would cleave their words into a new shape and sound, which was a shape that he determined, so that no matter the intent of their speech, what they revealed was only to the benefit of Yu'ka. From Qarleth he stole the secret of Fire, from Shungrath he claimed the secret of Sight, and on and through the rainbow heavens he conquered not blood and bone, but greater treasures of godly power.
Until at last he came to the meanest of the gods, who swung their feet from the rainbow bridge and smiled down at the world below and did not respond to Yu'ka's demands. This god was nameless: a forgotten, emaciated little god, barely more than a spirit and Yu'ka grew frustrated. His arts were such that he could bend all meaning and things to his desire, cleaving life from the mortal and holy from the immortal, but at the end of it all Yu'ka found he could not war against nothing. He could not cut that which did not exist. This god did not reply, did not react, did not see Yu'ka at all, so fixated was this god on the world below and his own mirth. Without words spoken, Yu'ka could not cut their meanings; without strife, Yu'ka could not impose his will.
Finally, in a rage, Yu'ka struck the foot from the god and it tumbled from heaven with a trail of shining ichor. Then he struck off their right hand, and it leapt to fingertips and scuttled away. Yu'ka struck off the god's other foot, and left hand, and then both arms at the elbow. The left hand sunk deep roots into the heavenly bridge. There on the edge of the rainbow bridge Yu'ka butchered the nameless god, cleaving every joint and with each cut the god was not diminished, but spread apart. With his final blow, Yu'ka made the art of Ten Ten Thousand Cuts, so that this god might be wiped away, and as the head of the god burst into a million glittering pieces, his last breath whispered from his lips.
Then Yu'ka knew he had been undone, for this nameless god was Yun'Yuuzhan, and the galaxies and worlds were birthed from the destruction of his body. Yu'ka had claimed all mysteries of the gods, he had cleaved Death from Life in the realm of the mortal, so in his hands he held all Signs of creation. And with those hands, that knew the secret truth of murder, those hands that had scarred the world, Yu'ka had broken the godly-body, so that those secrets and signs worked with the flesh of Yun'Yuuzhan. So then that it was that all things came to be and the world was bent and made finite, and the True Gods born, to guide their Chosen."
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Harrar drained his bulb, tearing into its flesh with his teeth, relishing its shuddering agony as the little biot died. Brakish and sour, he chewed thoughtfully while observing Malik Carr. Through the tale, the Commander listened attentively and carefully, absentmindedly tracing the outlines of tattoos on his chest with one long talon, occasionally pressing deep enough to bring brief beads of black blood to the surface.
"I have not heard this legend," Carr murmured. "A strange one, for one such as yourself to speak of, Eminence. A very martial tale."
"Is it?" Harrar adjusted his robes. "Yu'ka is a trifle of apocrypha, remembered only by those who follow my Goddess. In fact, the Lesson of Yu'ka is a favorite among young initiates. Consider it, Commander. What does Yu'ka teach?"
Malik Carr's answer was immediate, simple, rote, and Harrar could have spoken the words along with the warrior.
"That strength in warfare is the greatest above all, that only through sacrifice and struggle may we honor the gods."
Something Tla might have said, but Harrar was not disappointed.
"When he broke the legions of the Red Salt, that much is true. But were not the other warriors and warlords honoring the gods in their own ways, as they made great wars? Yu'ka might have been grander than them all, but what made him different?"
"He ascended to the realms of the Gods themselves." Malik Carr narrowed his eyes. "That seems blasphemy," he mused.
"On the surface. The Lesson of Yu'ka, and why it is so enjoyed by my order, is what Yu'ka could not do. No matter his strength of arms, Yu'ka could not overcome the last godling, who was Yun'Yuuzhan."
"This sits strangely with me. Yun-Yuuzhan sacrificed himself so that the universe might be. For another to do such…"
"But did Yu'ka act on his own accord? Think harder, Commander, for this is a lesson I think you would be well served to learn."
Scowling, no doubt irritated to be chastened, even lightly, Malik Carr reached for a bulb of his own broth. Harrar did not wish to spell it out, for what was the point of a sermon if every nuance needed to be outline and the listener led by the nose to enlightenment? He nibbled at the corpse of his bulb while Malik Carr pondered, finishing off the snack just as the Commander began to slowly nod.
"Yu'ka was used," he said slowly. "Yun'Yuuzhan orchestrated it all." He nodded, more firmly. "Of course. Yun'Yuuzhan intends all things and surely knew of Yu'ka's desires. By being the last for Yu'ka to see-"
"-the Great Father ensured that when Yu'ka slew him, that Yu'ka held all the powers of all facets of Yun'Yuuzhan in hand. It was sacrifice by the hand of another. Yu'ka believed himself to be in command of his own fate, even as he struck the head from Yun'Yuuzhan. But in reality, he had always been dancing to the strings of the Great Father, whose design is deep and broad."
"And so Yu'ka was deceived," Malik Carr said, wryly, a smirk tugging on scarred cheeks. "I see your meaning."
"You spoke of deception in warfare, Commander. The greatest tactic is one in which your foe believes themselves master of the design, that you are the one dancing to their own tune. But in truth, it is a web of your own making, and they instead are the quisak feeling blindly in the dark. Make every one of their victories secretly a loss, and every one of your losses secretly a victory, and by the time your coufee is at their throat, their lips will be wet with celebration wine."